Mike Watson, who hails from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, is a Canadian professional online poker player with over $19.4 million in live tournament earnings. He became a two-time European Poker Tour (EPT) champion after winning the EPT Monte Carlo €5,300 Main Event as part of the 2023 PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) presented by Monte-Carlo Casino®.
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ICYMI: this is how @SirWatts took down the #EPTMonteCarlo Main Event, becoming only the third player to win two live EPT Main Event titles. 👏 pic.twitter.com/hl4tNj4LwI
— PokerStars LIVE (@PokerStarsLIVE) May 7, 2023
On Day 4 of the event, Watson was on the verge of being eliminated. There were only two cards in the deck that could have helped him. However, he managed to hit one of them and climbed back up to win the event on Day 6, earning €749,425.
Before this victory, Watson won the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event for $728,325. He is now the third player in poker history to win two live EPT Main Event titles, following Vicky Coren-Mitchell, who did it in 2014, and Mikalai Pobal in 2019.
The EPT Monte Carlo Main Event had a prize pool of €5,325,300 and drew a record-tying field of 1,098 runners. In the end, Watson defeated Germany’s player Leonard Maue.
In a winner’s interview, Watson expressed his excitement at the achievement, stating that it was an amazing accomplishment. He further mentioned that doing it again for the second time made it feel more significant. Mike also acknowledged that he had joined a very small club of champions and said that winning a big tournament was amazing, but this one felt a little extra special.
Watson also mentioned that he was fortunate to have a big stack for much of the final table and was able to leverage that to build a stack. He further said that he had some good hands and big pots going his way as well.