<img src="http://www.liquidpoker.net/staff/Raidern/rsz_johnphan.jpg" align="right" style="margin:5px; border: 1px solid black;">The year of 2008 has definitely been some kind of a breakthrough year to John Phan when we talk about live tournaments. Not only he won his first two bracelets at this year's World Series of Poker, now, after 6 days of competition, he won the <b>2008 Legends of Poker</b>, his first WPT title!
The tournament had a $10,000 buy-in and 373 registered players, 112 shorter than last year. As expected, the event had one of the toughest fields you can find on the circuit, with names like: Erick Lindgren, Men Nguyen, Daniel Negranu, Kathy Liebert, David Pham and Erik Seidel. The internet guys were also there: Isaac "WestmenloA" Baron, Alec "Traheho" Torelli, Matt “Allinat420” Stout and Amit “amak316” Makhija were some of the representatives of the online sharks.
All of the finalists, except for Phan, were debuting in a WPT final table. Phan took advantage of his experience and used the initial chiplead to get to the heads-up against online pro Amit Makhija, who started the hu-play in the chiplead.
It only took a few hands for TheRazor to take the chiplead though. He managed to double up and get an almost 4:1 chiplead when a K on the river gave him the TPTK. After that it was a bit of a rollercoaster, with Makhija doubling-up a few times, but without regaining the lead. It took some more hands and a bit over three hours for the final hand of the tournament. Phan's pocket threes survived the board and held against Makhija's K7dd. That was the hand that made John Phan a WPT champion and gave him the first-prize worth <b>$1,091,428</b>, setting his live tournament winnings to over 5 million dollars! Amit Makhija takes home <b>$563,320</b> for the 2nd place.
Final-table results:
1.John Phan -- $1,091,428
2.Amit Makhija -- $563,320
3.Zachary Clark -- $281,645
4.Paul Smith -- $246,450
5.Trong Nguyen -- $211,245
6.Kyle Wilson -- $176,035
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