Scott Margereson has pushed his career tournament earnings past the $5 million mark after winning the €2,700 EPT Second Chance at the 2026 PokerStars European Poker Tour stop in Barcelona, topping an 844-entry field to bank €361,060. The English pro beat France’s Natasha Mercier heads-up for the title, with Mercier collecting €225,580 as runner-up.
A Second Chance Event Built for Barcelona’s Biggest Names
The EPT Second Chance is a staple of the Barcelona stop’s side-event schedule, designed to give players eliminated from the festival’s marquee Main Event a lower buy-in shot at a big field and a big prize before the series wraps up. With 844 entries at €2,700 apiece, the tournament built one of the deeper prize pools of the week outside the Main Event itself, and it drew a mix of grinders looking to salvage their Barcelona trip and recreational players chasing one last big score. Margereson worked through that field over several days of play before eventually reaching heads-up against Mercier, closing out the win to add another title to an already lengthy resume built almost entirely on the European tournament circuit.
Where the Win Ranks Among Margereson’s Career Scores
The €361,060 payday is the third-largest single score of Margereson’s career, behind only his $696,740 victory in the $3,500 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown in 2018 and the €423,700 he collected for winning the 2025 PokerStars Open Malta Main Event. That places his Barcelona result inside his personal top three despite coming in a side event rather than a festival’s headline tournament, underlining how deep the Second Chance field ran this year. Margereson has built his reputation over more than a decade as one of the most consistent mid-to-high-stakes tournament regulars in Europe, with results stacked across EPT, WPT and domestic UK stops rather than a single signature win carrying his career earnings.
Crossing $5 million in lifetime tournament cashes puts Margereson in a group of players who have sustained that level of return almost entirely through live tournament play, a much harder path than it might sound given the variance built into no-limit hold’em fields of several hundred entries. Reaching that threshold typically requires not just one big score but years of consistently deep runs and final tables, the kind of track record that keeps a player rebuying into festival after festival even through inevitable cold stretches.
Natasha Mercier’s Deep Run
Mercier’s runner-up finish for €225,580 was itself a notable result in a tournament this size, and heads-up battles at EPT stops are watched closely by the European circuit’s community of regulars given how often the same recognizable names resurface at the business end of these fields. Falling just short of a title against a player of Margereson’s experience is no small consolation prize, and the finish adds to a résumé that already carries multiple deep runs on the EPT and related tours this year.
Barcelona’s Place on the 2026 EPT Calendar
The Second Chance result is one of several storylines to come out of EPT Barcelona this year, which also featured a deep Brazilian contingent in the Main Event and a separate PokerStars Open Barcelona Main Event title. Side events like the Second Chance matter to the overall texture of a festival stop precisely because they let players who bust the marquee tournament stay in action, often building some of the tour’s largest prize pools of the week in the process. For recreational players following the results from home, especially in fast-growing markets such as Brazil where EPT and WPT streams draw large audiences, these secondary titles are frequently the more approachable entry point into understanding how a modern festival schedule is structured around one headline event surrounded by a dozen or more supporting tournaments.
Players curious about how buy-in structures, staggered starting days and heads-up formats like the one that decided this title actually work can find a breakdown in Poker Pro Academy’s how to play poker guidewhich covers tournament structures alongside the basic rules.
What Comes Next for Margereson
With $5 million now behind him, Margereson is expected to continue his usual heavy schedule across the EPT, WPT and UK domestic circuits for the remainder of the year. His career has been defined less by a single marquee title than by the sheer volume of deep runs racked up across more than a decade, and the Barcelona result extends that pattern rather than marking a dramatic reinvention. For a European Poker Tour stop already generating headlines around its Main Event, the Second Chance title is a reminder that a festival’s smaller side events can still produce some of its most financially significant results.
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