Bertrand Grospellier took the honours in the latest stop on the European Poker Tour - the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.
The 26-year-old Frenchman, who lives in South Korea, landed a record first prize of $2 million after beating a field of 1136 players.
The event at the Atlantis Casino, Paradise Island, Nassau in The Bahamas is the biggest televised poker tournament outside of the World Series of Poker.
It was Grospellier's biggest career victory - his previous best result was last January when he finished second in the Copenhagen event on the European Poker Tour and won 309,000 Euros.
He follows Gus Hansen, John Gale, Steve Paul-Ambrose and Ryan Daut in the list of Caribbean Adventure champions.
Grospellier, known as Elky, told All In magazine: "The entire trip has been one thrilling experience after another and now I'm returning home as the 2008 PCA Champion.
"This was definitely one of the hardest tournaments I've ever played. It was a very tough field with a lot of online American qualifiers who played really well. But I really wanted this title and I would have been very disappointed not to win."
Americans took the next three spots with Hafiz Khan from California followed by Ohio's Kris Kuykendall and David Pham who hails from Vietnam but now also lives in California.
They win $1 million, $800,000 and $600,000 respectively with all seven of Grospellier's final table opponents having come through the sponsors' online method - Chesterfield's Craig Hopkins and the American trio of Joseph Elpayaa, Christian Harder and Richard Fohrenbach being the others.
Grospellier began the final table in second position with just over 3 million chips and clamed victory over Khan with a pair of eights.
The European Poker Tour now moves on to Dortmund later this month. |
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