Isabelle Mercier enjoyed a considerable amount of time in the poker spotlight in the earliest days of the poker boom. After earning her law degree in Montreal, she moved to Paris and managed one of the most famous poker rooms in the world, the Aviation Club.
Her experience at the Aviation Club made Mercier a familiar face in the booming poker scene. She made her first splash on the other side of the table in 2002, when she finished second in an event at the 2002 Master Classics of Poker.
Mercier eventually switched to poker full time, and made an immediate splash in her broadcast TV debut during season 2 of the World Poker Tour. She memorably won the second-ever Ladies Night show, filmed at The Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles.
It was during that broadcast that legendary commentator and Poker Hall of Famer Mike Sexton bestowed her with the nickname, ‘No Mercy.’
In the ensuing years, Mercier made deep runs at the EPT Grand Final, EPT Deauville, and the World Series of Poker. There were online poker successes in the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker, as well as the Sunday Million. She even appeared in the movie The Deal with Burt Reynolds.
Her largest live poker result came in 2009, when she won an Ante Up For Africa event during the EPT Monte Carlo for €260,000, besting a final table that featured Daniel Negreanu, Tony G, and former soccer star Teddy Sheringham.
Mercier Back At The Tables
Mercier’s live poker play started to wane over the next few years, and she ultimately moved towards an almost exclusively online schedule. The CoinPoker ambassador became deeply entrenched in the high-stakes Open Face Chinese Poker scene and even took down the first ever progressive World Championship of Open Face Chinese Poker in Prague.
Over the last year, the 50-year-old Victoriaville, Quebec native has started to dip her toe back into the live poker world, returning to stops such as the WSOP Circuit at Playground Poker in Montreal and the WSOP this summer in Las Vegas.
Card Player recently caught up with Mercier at the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas to talk about her return to the live streets and reminisce about her fondest memories of the poker boom.
Tim Fiorvanti: What has it been like to be back, playing these big field live events again after spending so much time away?
Isabelle Mercier: It’s amazing at many levels. I haven’t traveled for 10 years, and yet, so many of these people are still my friends somehow. I just saw John Hennigan, and he was like, ‘Oh, No Mercy!’ I saw Allen Kessler this summer at the World Series, I had dinner with Gus Hansen, and many drinks with my “Captain” Bruno Fitoussi. It was amazing to catch up on our lives, because we haven’t spoken for a decade.
The second part is playing live again. I’ve always played online and never stopped, even while I was not traveling. But playing live just feels like I’m in my living room. I feel good here. I love this vibe. I love talking with people. And I’m that type of player who likes to talk and not just sit hidden behind sunglasses.
Of course, the level of the game has gotten much better, especially from when I started. I’m not like these young kids with the solvers and ICM. I know the concepts, but I’m more about playing with the vibe. I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert there, but I still think players like myself can win, with all of the knowledge we have, the experience… the baggage.
Mercier At The 2008 WSOP
It almost feels like I was in hibernation or something. I moved out of the city, I bought a house in the middle of the woods, with my garden and my chickens. I’ve just been in this bubble, almost cut off from the world. At one point I swore I would never travel again. I was very comfy in my little environment.
But now it feels like I’m back to life. I just turned 50. Getting back to traveling and seeing people… that’s a gift from myself to myself.
TF: You’ve had several sponsorships over the years, but you’ve been with CoinPoker for quite a long time. I’m curious as to how your role as an ambassador came together.
IM: This is a story that all starts with Pineapple Open Face Chinese poker. I was in Monaco, and I had been playing Open Face Chinese poker for a minute. At first it was just Chinese Poker, back in the days of the Aviation Club, just one card at the time. I mean, how boring can that be, in retrospect? There’s no fantasyland, or anything like that.
I remember playing with David Benyamine for hours at a time, sometimes all night long. Now that I look back, I’ve loved some version of this game for 20 years.
I lived in Monaco for 10 years as a consultant for Casino Monte Carlo. One day I was having lunch with my friend Garou, the famous singer, and he showed me the Pineapple OFC app. I didn’t know anything about it, but I downloaded the app.
I started playing with Garou, and then with everyone. From that point on, I was playing, playing, playing, going crazy. I felt the need to play cash games. I was looking for something, and I found out TonyBet poker was the place where you can play OFC.
Mercier Wins OFC Championship
So, I called Tony G, and I said, “Hey, my friend. We need to promote your game. I’m here for you. I can be your ambassador.”
I signed with TonyBet as a pro, only for Pineapple Poker. Then I start to play crazy amounts of Pineapple OFC, like a degenerate. It was just like when I discovered online poker back in 2000. Just all day, every day, playing that game, going crazy with it. This was in September 2015.
TF: That was when OFC was really starting to blow up.
IM: In December 2015, TonyBet organized the first World Championship of OFC Poker in Prague, and there was a progressive version of the tournament, which I won. The timing was perfect. I had just become an ambassador, and then won the world championship. That win was actually a funny story.
It was one of the first events of its kind. There haven’t been a lot of live OFC tournaments because you need one dealer for two or three people. The regular poker dealers don’t know how to count the points very easily, so the players have to do it themselves. It’s very complex.
So the structure was… I’m going to say, so-so, because the tournament started at 6 p.m., and I won it at 10 a.m. the day after. No dinner, no breakfast. I was with a friend of mine there, playing at three or four in the morning, and we were joking about missing the window for breakfast at the hotel.
By the time we took the picture at 10 a.m., and went back to the hotel, sure enough, no more breakfast. The main event started at 2 p.m. that same day, which, of course, I was playing. I slept for 90 minutes, went back to the casino, and started playing the main event.
TF: Eventually you end up back home in Canada. How did things evolve from there?
IM: I continued to play for TonyBet. They started a lot of operations in Montreal through Playground Poker Club. We were working on opening a poker room with Guy Laliberte in Monaco, but there were a lot of complications. I was working on this for three years, for free, because I believed in the project. But at some point, you know it’s not going to happen. I decided then that I was going back to Montreal.
I came back to Montreal, did a lot of operations for Playground, worked with TonyBet, and everything for Pineapple OFC. In 2017, Tony G called me, and said, ‘We’re going to stop Open Face Chinese on TonyBet. But we’re going to have it on CoinPoker instead. It’s going to be a site where you play in cryptocurrency. The RNG (random number generator) is going to be on the blockchain.”
I had heard the name ‘Bitcoin’ once. I got on the internet, YouTube, and I started my research, and I loved the idea. After calling Tony back, and I signed with CoinPoker on day 1. So, it’s been eight years now that I’ve been playing on CoinPoker.
I love the site design. It’s very sleek. It reminds me of some of my favorite online poker platforms back in the day. Pure, simple, and clean. Sophisticated, fast-action games.
TF: How has your poker playing evolved over your time with CoinPoker?
IM: The first thing is, I went back to playing no-limit hold’em. I’m not much of a cash game player, especially online. I’m more of a tournament player. I started to watch some TV shows. I have a subscription to PokerGO, and I watch the Triton events.
Also, I absolutely love the Mind of the Pro series that Winamax does. Adrian Mateos is just… that guy is a bible. I mean, watching this guy play… Sometimes I ask myself, ‘What would Adrian do?’ It helps me a lot. For many years, this guy has been winning big. He’s my poker hero.
TF: I’m sure that being back in and around poker, and the players, helps some old memories resurface. When you think back to your early days in poker, what stands out the most?
IM: I think all of my favorite memories involve other poker players, mostly away from the tables. The times when we were having dinner. Going shopping with Evelyn Ng. Going to see a basketball game in Los Angeles with Erick Lindgren and Bob [Haralabos] Voulgaris. Nightclubs with Daniel Negreanu. It’s just about all of these bonds that I made with this crew in the ‘good old days.’
I asked Daniel to coach me, and actually, this was before I won the WPT. He was laughing. I started to work on a book with Gus Hansen and Paul Magriel, and then I won the WPT. So then Daniel was like, “Maybe I should have…”
Writing books has been incredible. I released my second book in 2025, called Chronique d’une Joueuse De Poker. It’s 36 chronicles, like short essays about all of these stories, really funny. The craziest things that happen in the life of a woman in the poker world. As of now, it’s only in French, but we’re working on translating it in English.
Of course, winning was always fun, too. One of my best memories was winning the Monte Carlo Ante Up for Africa event, and finishing fifth in a $5,000 no-limit hold’em event at the WSOP.
Although I did make a super bad bluff against Phil Hellmuth at that table, who reads bad bluffs for a living. That’s not my best memory, probably my worst. But then again, how many people have had the opportunity to even try to do something like that?
Find Isabelle at the CoinPoker tables and follow her on Twitter/X @IsabelleNoMercy.