Joel Micka originally hails from Washington State, but now lives all across the world: in Thailand, Canada or Costa Rica. Micka plays under the name 'JMPRODIGY' on PokerStars where has won $352,842 in online tournaments. He has a string of live results with his best to date being $148,993 for a runner-up finish at LAPT San Jose in 2008. He also won the Macau Poker Cup High Roller event for $64,350 as well as a cash in last summer’s World Series of Poker Main Event for $38,453. He's currently being railed by a number of Supernova friends who are trying to cheer him on to another win. (They also have a cut of
Micka’s action.)
Jonathan Roy closed out 2012 with a bang as he won the World Poker Tour Montreal Main Event for a payday of $755,601. There, he defeated a record field of 1,173 players to win the title and the largest score of his career.
Roy is good friends with Team PokerStars Pro Jonathan Duhamel, who was on his rail for Roy's big win in Montreal. We expect Duhamel to be sweating Roy hard from the rail here in the Bahamas as well.
Formerly an online player, the 25-year-old Roy has been transitioning into live poker a bit more recently. After Black Friday hit, Roy moved away from the virtual realm, claiming that he was "scared about online poker." Clearly the transition has worked out for him so far. Already earning $165,900 in prize money, Roy has locked up the second largest score of his career and pushed his live career tournament earnings up over $1 million.
Jerry Wong didn’t get a shred of sleep prior to Day 5 – a mosquito took up residence in his room and bit him all night. Tired though he was however, it didn’t seem to have any effect on the 30-year-old’s performance. Hours later Wong was soaring into the chip lead and takes the advantage into the final table.
Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Wong graduated from Plattsburgh University last year with a degree in finance but considers himself to be a professional poker player, with results stretching back five years. His biggest result to date came in 2008 at the World Poker Finals in Mashantucket. Whatever result Wong records in the PCA 2013 final, it will be a new best.
Owen Crowe is a 30-year-old Canadian professional poker player hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Crowe has tournament earnings that date back as far as 2005, but he truly burst onto the poker scene during the 2008 World Series of Poker. Crowe's 15th place finish out of 6,844 runners in the 2008 WSOP Main Event earned Crowe an incredible payday of $436,201. Since then Crowe has had tremendous success at the WSOP by making four final tables over the past four years. Despite his tremendous success, Crowe has been unable to earn a major tournament victory. He came the closest to attaining this goal in 2010 when he took 2nd place in Event 45: $1,000 No Limit Hold'em which, while it did not earn him a bracelet, did allow him to pocket $300,494 in prize money.
Since breaking onto the poker scene Crowe has been able to amass $1,797,915 in total live tournament winnings. Couple that with his massive success online playing under the name "ocrowe" over PokerStars and other sites and you have one deadly opponent. Crowe has felt the pressure of a final table before which may provide him with a significant edge over some of his opponents as he embarks on what could be the final steps of his journey to his first major tournament win.
Russia’s Andrey Shatilov is a Supernova Elite and bought in to PCA Main Event with 750,000 FPPs. He has a solid list of previous live event cashes, including a win at an event in the Dominican Republic in 2012 worth $108,000. This will be the 26-year-old’s first major final table however, and his biggest cash to date. He’s currently sitting in 120th place on the Russian all time money list, but victory in the PCA Main Event would instantly land him in 10th place, among the highest-earning players the country has ever produced.
Dimitar Danchev qualified through PokerStars in a $700 qualifier, and the 27 year old has been playing poker for over five years with more than half of that time as a professional. He generally doesn’t play too many tournaments and prefers to concentrate on cash games. His choice of game is no-limit Hold'em cash games, and he regularly plays online.
In October of 2011, Danchev netted his largest live score ever when he final tabled the European Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event. There, he went on to finish in second place behind Andrey Pateychuk and took home a cool €600,000 after the two struck a deal.
Since his massive result in Italy, Danchev has added another $161,113 to his live tournament record. He has already surpassed the $1 million mark for career live tournament earnings and is top of the Bulgarian All-Time Money list. Some of his other notable results include a 20th-place finish in the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final of last season for €40,000 and a 31st-place finish in this season's EPT Sanremo Main Event for €19,000.
Danchev has the chance to bring Bulgaria its first EPT title, and he'll surely be aiming to finish one spot better than he did in Sanremo in 2011 in order to snatch up the victory.
Joao Nogueira is a 21-year-old air conditioner installer from Lagares, Penefiel, Portugal, a small town in the northern part of the country that’s home to only 2,500 people. This is his first live tournament and he won his seat to the PCA in a $10 qualifier on PokerStars. Not only that…he won his seat into that qualifier by winning a $1.10 sitngo! He is hoping to use part of his winnings to throw a massive party for everyone he knows, including his girlfriend, Diana, who couldn’t make the trip because of school requirements.
