Jason Koon Wins Winner-Take-All $100k Sit N Go at EPT Monte Carlo

What do you get if you bring nine high rollers to Monte Carlo and play a winner-take-all Sit N Go? Drama, excitement and a thrilling finish were the answers to that question this week in Monaco as PokerStars and the European Poker Tour played host to a very special event on the Côte d’Azur. In the end, Jason Koon reigned supreme after he came back from being short stack in dramatic fashion.

Player Power Rules Roost in Monte Carlo

“We decided to make the hardest table that you could possibly imagine.”

It is to the credit of the European Poker Tour (EPT) that Monte Carlo was the scene of drama this week in the High Roller Series. With the arranged cash game for nine players scheduled to bumper the coverage for the Main Event, fans might have had to switch up from tournament coverage to cash. Instead, the nine players requested an alteration with a difference. Not just any old Sit N Go, but one where only the winner would take all the money. So that’s what happened.

Every player had to put down €100,000, making a prize pool of €900,000 except PokerStars added in another €100,000, making it great value with some added prize money – a million-euro top prize. With stars of the felt such as Jason Koon, Ben Tollerene and Artur Martirosian all poised, the cards were in the air and it was a race to play down to a winner in one day which eventually took over seven hours. Jason Koon explained the idea behind the format.

“There are lots of different kinds of poker content,” Koon said. “Most of it [is] a mix of people who don’t play poker for a living and some of the best players. We decided to make the hardest table that you could possibly imagine and see what happens. And that’s today.”

The early levels went against the West Virginian as he lost pot after pot to slide from 1,000,000 starting chips to just 392,000. Pocket kings lost to pocket aces for the minimum, and both Kayhan Mokri and Artur Martirosian had better hands at showdown to put the American in a world of pain across the first two-hour session of the day.

The Script Gets Flipped

When players returned from their first break, it was the Belarussian Mikita Badziakouski who led them. However, while Jason Koon started to recover chips, the former leader Badziakouski couldn’t catch a break, sliding down the rankings until he was below the stack belonging to former bracelet winner Aleks Ponakovs. All-in with pocket kings on a board of J-T-7-3, Badziakouski was in terrible shape against the pocket tens of Ponakovs and no two-outer came on the river, meaning the Belarussian left in ninth place.

It took another two hours to find another evictee, and when it came, it was the Canadian player Daniel Dvoress who bit the bullet… or rather, two of them. All-in with pocket nines, he started his final hand as he ended it, far behind Aleks Ponakovs’ pocket aces. Soon, Dvoress was joined on the rail by his fellow North American Ben Tollerene, whose queen-jack was all-in and at risk against the pocket kings of Stephen Chidwick. A jack on the flop hinted at help but no more came as Chidwick began a rollercoaster period at the felt.

The British poker hero took out Ponakovs in seventh place when the Latvian bluff-shoved with pocket deuces into a queen-board that had hit Chidwick’s ace-queen on the flop. A counterfeit river cost Chidwick almost all of his stack when Koon’s ace-played as kicker, Chidwick’s king-high hand no good after his flopped pair of threes had been overtaken by two other pairs on the board.

Koon Goes from Zero to Hero

With Ben Tollerene another player to bust, Chidwick negotiated his way to three-handed but, still short, was unable to make what arguably might have been one of the best heads-ups of the year. All-in with pocket tens, he lost to Kayhan Mokri’s queen-jack with all the chips in the middle pre-flop after the Norwegian paired to make the final battle for the money with roughly half of Koon’s stack.

As it happened, what might have been a longer drawn-out affair between two other players was over in one hand. The former Triton Jeju champion Mokri moved all-in with king-four and was marginally ahead of Koon when the American called with king-deuce. In fact, the chances were greatest that there would be an infamous ‘Chop Pot’ song coming to the ears of PokerStars viewers before the board played out. However, Koon was about to suck out to win the title.

Two spades were in Koon’s hand and only one came on the flop but another on the turn gave the West Virginian the flush draw. A spade came in on the river and that earned Koon the sole prize of €1,000,000.

Want to watch all the action as it happened in Monte Carlo? Head to the PokerStars YouTube account to watch the final table rerun here!