Leo Wolpert wins 2009 WSOP Event 29The 2009 WSOP $10,000 buy-in World Championship of Heads Up No Limit Texas Hold’em is in the books, and it’s former poker pro Leo Wolpert who came out victorious. Considering in last year’s WSOP, Wolpert cashed five times including a 3rd place finish, it might seem odd to call him a “former” poker pro. However, this is how he describes himself; at just age 26 he has put poker on hold to pursue law school.

“I can’t really even describe it,” Wolpert said. “I actually didn’t really expect to win. I mean, I always enter a tournament hoping to win. But with a tough field like this I wasn’t even really thinking about it until today. The goal was to just play against whoever I was going to play and run good against them, see if they had some leaks, and try to exploit those — and I happened to run really, really good during the entire tournament. Now here I am.”

2009 WSOP Event 29, Road to Victory

There were 256 players bracketed at the start of this event, when ESPN360 coverage began there were eight players remaining battling it out for a spot in the final four. The biggest match was Johnny Chan versus Jamin Stokes. The poker world’s eyes were glued to this match as players looked to see if Johnny Chan could win his eleventh career WSOP bracelet which would tie him with Phil Hellmuth for the most all time. Chan ended up falling short, and former WSOP Circuit winner Jamin Stokes had a heads up victory against Chan to add to his resume.

Other elite eight matches saw:

Leo Wolpert defeat Dustin “Neverwin” Woolf
John Duthie defeat Steve O’Dwyer
Nathan Doudney defeated Bryan Pellegrino

Semi Final Results:

The four semi finalists met at one table which was broadcast live on ESPN360. The two match ups were Nathan Doudney against John Duthie and Leo Wolpert against Jamin Stokes. The structure gave each player 1,920,000 chips with 40 min blind levels.

Wolpert found himself down early in his semi final mach after he committed much of his chips on an eight high board while holding J8, only to see Stokes held pocket kings. It took about an hour of grinding for him to get back into the match and eventually claim the chip lead. Their final hand saw Stokes move all in with Qh 9d on a 3h 6d 8h flop only to get called by Wolpert who had Ah Jh for a bigger flush draw and a bigger two over cards. The turn was a Jc and the river the 8s sending Stokes out as the forth place finisher.

In the other semi final match, EPT founder John Duthie used timely aggression through out the duel to keep and grow a chip lead. On the final hand Duthie pushed all in with pocket queens and Doudney called tabling AJ. The board ran nine high and Doudney was out as the third place finisher.

Leo Wolpert wins WSOP Bracelet in Event 29

Wolpert lost the first match in the best-of-three finals but was able to come back and win the next two.

“I was steaming a little bit,” he said after the loss in the first match. “I’m not going to lie. I just decided, ‘I have to grind back and get the best two out of three.’ So I stayed calm and remembered there was another match coming up. And hopefully I could run a little better the next time. I would not say it strengthened my resolve. I would say I was already pretty resolute to win.”

The former professional poker player is now in law school at the University of Virginia. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he spent two years playing professionally online and used his winnings to pay for law school.

“The University of Virginia is a top-ten school,” Wolpert said. “I had a big score last year, so that has been helping to finance my education.”

Other notable finishers include Alec Torelli (12th), Justin Smith (13th) and Yevgeniy Timoshenko (14th).

Top 8 finishers in 2009 WSOP Event 29

1. Leo Wolpert – $625,682
2. John Duthie – $386,636
3. Jamin Stokes – $214,289
4. Nathan Doudney – $214,289
5. Johnny Chan – $92,580
6. Dustin (Neverwin) Woolf – $92,580
7. Stephen O’Dwyer – $92,580
8. Bryan Pellegrino – $92,580