{"id":949,"date":"2011-09-10T17:41:21","date_gmt":"2011-09-10T21:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/?p=949"},"modified":"2011-09-10T17:41:21","modified_gmt":"2011-09-10T21:41:21","slug":"mike-mcdonald-epic-poker-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/mike-mcdonald-epic-poker-league","title":{"rendered":"Mike McDonald wins Lackluster Epic Poker League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The second ever Epic Poker League Main Event wasn&#8217;t exactly a resounding success since just 97 of the 200 invited poker pros joined the tournament. Seeing as how invited players are given a free $20,000 Main Event seat, and hotel\/travel costs are covered, you have to wonder about the future of this organization.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, the 97 players that did show up to the Epic Poker League certainly weren&#8217;t sorry because a $2.3 million prize pool was up for grabs, and the first place finisher was guaranteed $782k. Once everything was decided on the poker tables, Mike McDonald was crowned the champion.<\/p>\n<p>McDonald, who became the youngest EPT winner in history after taking down the 2008 EPT Dortmund Main Event, outlasted\u00a0David Steicke in heads-up play to scoop the big prize. And what&#8217;s nice about this win is that McDonald will have something extra to celebrate for his birthday tomorrow, when he turns 22. The Canadian now has\u00a0$3,668,524 in live tournament winnings.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this is nowhere close to the $16.8 million that Erik Seidel has earned throughout his career, which ranks first all-time. And the reason why we&#8217;re bringing up Seidel is because the former New Yorker took fourth place in this tournament, and earned $184k for yet another solid finish this year. He took second place in the first Epic Poker League tournament too, and has earned $6,445,168 in 2011 alone!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also worth mentioning that French poker star Fabrice Soulier took third place in this tournament, while the oft-hated Dutch Boyd finished in eighth place. Here is a look at the full standings from the second Epic Poker League Main Event:<\/p>\n<p>1. Mike McDonald &#8211; $782,410<br \/>\n2. David Steicke &#8211; $506,260<br \/>\n3. Fabrice Soulier &#8211; $299,160<br \/>\n4.\u00a0Erik Seidel &#8211; $184,100<br \/>\n5. Nam Le &#8211; $126,570<br \/>\n6. Isaac Baron &#8211; $92,050<br \/>\n7. Sean Getzwiller &#8211; $69,040<br \/>\n8. Dutch Boyd &#8211; $57,530<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The second ever Epic Poker League Main Event wasn&#8217;t exactly a resounding success since just 97 of the 200 invited poker pros joined the tournament. Seeing as how invited players are given a free $20,000 Main Event seat, and hotel\/travel costs are covered, you have to wonder about the future of this organization. In any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[582,584,579,178,264,583,580,11,386,581],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepokerpractice.com\/poker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}