UK's John Paul Kelly Wins Event 20 of 2009 WSOP

June 15, 2009 - Written By Bonnie

With the 2009 WSOP Main Event only weeks away, each event get more and more challenging for even the big names in poker. June 11, 2009 was the close of the 20th event of the  2009 WSOP, the Pot Limit Hold em' tournament and it sure was an exhausting one. With a buy in of $1500, 633 competitors turned out all in the hopes of making their way to the final table. Among those players were some of the World's highest skilled players such as John Juanda, Andy Bloch, Allen Cunningham, Brandon Canty, and JC Tran,  just to name a few.

Coming into the final day of the tournament, one name that stuck out in the crowd was well known professional poker player Erik Seidel. Seidel came into this event with one goal in mind and that was to make this event his 9th gold bracelet win and the 55th time he walked away with a cash prize. Although Seidel was a definitely a crowd favorite, he was left disappointed after being put out in the seventh position and leaving the head to head challenge for UK's John-Paul Kelly and Germany's Marc Tschirch. This challenge was entertaining right from the start. Kelly and Tschirch went back and forth sharing the chip leader posistion and some how managing to land fairly close to one another.

John-Paul Kelly would be the one overcome Tschirch and be named the winner of event 20 of the 2009 WSOP. He persistence and patience paid of and earned him a nice cash prize of $194,434 and a 2009 WSOP gold bracelet.