WSOP 2008 comes to a close

11.11.2008 | 9:03 am | Poker

As the dust starts to settle on WSOP 2008 we can now look back at what has been possibly one of the best tournaments in history of the game. We saw a massive 6844 players enter in early July and got down to the last nine on Sunday, then came the head to head and the official unveiling of the new WSOP 2008 champion. But who took the crown?

While many of you will have checked the Internet already those who have not may be surprised to see Peter Eastgate the 22-year-old Danish poker player crowned as the new king of WSOP 2008. At just 22 years old he is the youngest winner of the main table in the history of the event and takes over a record set 19 years ago by the infamous Phil Hellmuth. While Eastgate was one of the favourites leading up to the event and rightly took his place in the head-to-head with Ivan Demidov he was still many many chips behind as the head-to-head began.

Having been literally tens of millions of chips down Eastgate managed to chip away at the Demidov superior chip pile until he has turned the tables with his opponent down to 16,000,000 chips and Eastgate himself in excess of 100 million chips. The new champ then literally squeezed and squeezed until his opponent was taken of the game.

Peter Eastgate now takes home in excess of $9 million for the first prize but his opponent also walks away with a cheque for nearly $6 million and while he may not be as famous as his victor he has also put himself into the record books. Those who want to see the action can watch various TV channels over the next few weeks were recorded footage of the full main table will be played over and over again.