26-year-old equities trader wins WSOP title, $206,760

Benjamin Scholl, a 26-year-old financial analyst from Trappe, Pa., won the $5,000 Limit Hold'em event early on Tuesday morning at the World Series of Poker held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, claiming the $206,760 first-place prize.

The tournament was played over a three-day period, starting with 166 entrants. The turnout was one of the smallest fields of the year, perhaps illustrative of a gradual decline in popularity of Limit Hold'em in recent years. Ironically, there was a time that Limit Hold'em used to be the dominant form played in the United States. Now, No-Limit games are far more popular.

The runner-up was Andrew Prock, a software designer originally from Minneapolis, Minn., and now living in Foster City, Calif., who claimed $127,773.

Scholl was born in York, Pa. He graduated from New York University and works as a trader with the same powerhouse financial firm that produced fellow-gold bracelet winners Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman.

The final table included two players who have stellar tournament records and more than $2 million each in WSOP earnings, but no gold bracelet wins, so far. Jeff Shulman, of the Card Player magazine empire, took third place, while Matt Glantz, a poker pro from the Philadelphia area, finished sixth.

other players who made the final table included: Jesse Martin of Shrewsbury, Mass., in fourth, Raymond Dehkharghani of Prarie Village, Kan., in fifth, Matthew Woodward of Waterboro, Maine, in seventh, Nicholas Derke of Las Vegas in eighth, and Ayman Qutami of Redwood City, Calif., in ninth.

The top 18 players finished in the money; also of note was Terrance Chan, the 12th-place finisher. This was his sixth in-the-money finish, to date in 2012.

Last year, this event was a $10,000 buy-in and drew 152 players. While the field size inreased by more than 9.2 percent, the prize pool shrunk by more than 45 percent.

Modified from tournament notes provided by WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla.