Keikoan wins WSOP Limit Hold'em World Championship, $425K

Matt Keikoan won the $10,000 Limit Hold'em World Championship at the World Series of Poker on Friday morning to claim his second career WSOP bracelet and $425,969.

Keikoan won his first WSOP gold bracelet in 2008 in a $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em event. He collected $550,529 in his first bracelet-winning effort.

"This one almost feels better than the first one," said Keikoan. "What I went through here tonight, all the ups and downs and back and forth; it wasn't easy. It was sure nice to get the first one. It was nice to get the second one, too."

A 42-year-old professional poker player from San Rafael, Calif., Keikoan worked as a poker prop for about eight years before phasing gradually into the life of a working poker pro. Keikoan played at Casino San Pablo in the San Francisco Bay area.

While working as a poker prop, some of Keikoan's regular co-workers included fellow highly-accomplished pros Bill Edler, Erick Lindgren, Bill Gazes, Matt Lefkowitz, and others.

The runner up was Dan Idema, a 27-year-old poker pro from Vancouver, B.C. The final hand was dealt with Idema crippled after losing a series of late hands; he was all-in in the big blind with four-deuce against Keikoan's ace-seven of hearts. The board ran out with three queens, a king and a jack, and Keikoan's three of a kind with an ace kicker took the pot and the title.

Prior to playing poker for a living, Idema played hockey in the Western Hockey League. Idema nearly became the fourth Canadian to win a gold bracelet this year, after countrymen Aadam Daya, Pascal Lefrancois, and Miguel Proulx won WSOP events. Second place paid a nice consolation prize of $263,243.

Kyle Ray from Athens, Ga., finished third to collect $190,701. A 24-year-old poker pro, Ray is a limit Hold'em coach. Jason Painter, from Goodfield, Ill., finished fourth in his third final table performance of the year to collect $140,760, while Brock Parker, from Silver Spring, Md., who won two WSOP events last year, won $105,782 with his fifth-place finish.

Zvi Groysman, from Thornhill, Ont., was sixth, Simon Morris, from Melbourne, Australia, was seventh, Michael "the Grinder" Mizrachi, who has now moved back atop the 2010 WSOP "Player of the Year" leader board with his third final table appearance, was eighth, and four-time WSOP gold bracelet winner David Chui, from Las Vegas, Nev., was ninth.

The top 18 finishers in the 171-player field collected prize money.

Modified from notes provided by Nolan Dalla for www.wsop.com.