Valdemar KwayssenThe kids are alright, well sort of. While maybe not a kid at 24, Latin American Poker Tour San Jose Costa Rica Champion Valdemar Kwayssen was the second young gun to win an LAPT in as many events.

The Hungarian player managed to outlast online pros Ashton Griffin and Steven Silverman (Zugwat online) at the final table to take home the crown. Despite trailing in chips going into today, Kwayssen laid a couple bad beats on the chip leaders to end their tournament run and propel himself to the victory.

The biggest victim of bad beats handed out by Kwaysser was Silverman, with his pocket kings getting cracked by T5 of spades, and then shortly after getting all in preflop with 55 versus Kwayssers 22, only to see the Hungarian spike his two outer. Lucky bounces like these led to Kwaysser going into heads up play versus 19 year old Max Steinberg with a 3:1 chip lead.

Heads up play lasted less than an hour and the final hand played out with Kwaysser limping the button with AA, and Steinberg checking his J9 option. A flop of 9 8 8 led Steinberg to open shove, which Kwaysser snap called. The running 6 and 4 were of no help and the tournament was won.

When handed the trophy Kwaysser looked almost embarrassed.

I really wanted to win,” Kwaysser said in the PokerStars blog. “But I know I had a really lucky period today. Steven [Silverman] trapped me. But that’s poker. You sometimes play perfect and don’t get the results. And sometimes it’s different.”

Although the title was nice, the $274,103 was probably sweeter. The event was considered a huge success, and with one event left in the LAPT trifecta of tournaments it looks like PokerStars ingenuity with poker in the Latin American market is paying off as well as it has in Asia.

The next event is in Punta Del Este in Uruguay August 7-9th.