<img src="http://www.liquidpoker.net/staff/Raidern/09april/vitalylunkin.JPG" align="right" style="margin:5px; border:1px solid black;">After four days of play, we finally have a winner for one of the most important tournaments of this year's World Series of Poker, the 40th Anniversary NLHE event! We make this announcement with a bitter feeling, because LPer Lex "RasZi" Veldhuis was at the final table and had a very good shot at the title, but it just wasn't meant to be. Instead, the Russian Vitaly Lunkin, stood out as the winner and cashed a whooping $1,891,012 ! That's the second WSOP bracelet of Lunkin's poker career. Last year he took down one of the $1,500 NLHE for $628,417 .

Because of the $40,000 buy-in, the field was one of the toughest possible. Most of the great players of the poker scene tried their skills in this tournament. The final table was as tough as it can get: Raszi, Isaac Haxton, Justin Bonomo, Alec Torelli, Greg Raymer, Dani Stern, Noah Schwartz, Ted Forrest and the champion, Vitaly Lunkin.

Raszi was eliminated in 7th place. There were a couple key hands for him in the final table. The most decisive of them was definitely a suckout in which he lost AK vs AJ to Dani Stern. Stern rivered a jack and doubled up through Raszi, hurting the Dutch's chip stack quite a lot. Later, Raszi got eliminated when he pushed all in with and ran into Raymer's pocket kings. Raszi pocketed $277,940 , which is a very good prize. Eventually, Raymer was eliminated by Isaac Haxton, and finished his attempt for a second bracelet in third place. By the time of Raymer's elimination, the three remaining players had about chip stacks of similar size: 50bb. Then, both Raymer and Haxton went all in, and Haxton's pocket nines prevailed over Raymer's pair of fives.

That hand made Haxton enter the heads-up with a 2:1 chip lead over Lunkin. We are talking about NL Hold'em though, and things change fast in this game. Just seven hands later, Lunkin took the lead from Haxton, and it changed back and forth a couple times during the 53 hands of the heads-up.

Vitaly Lunkin won the final hand after moving all in on a QT8 (all diamonds) flop. He held Aces, while Haxton had 38 with a diamond. No three, eight or diamonds in the later streets, and Lunkin wins the tournament. Haxton gets $1,168,566 for his runner-up finish. It’s the biggest result of Lunkin's career, and his second big win this month. Just three weeks ago he became the champion of the RPT Moscow.

Check out the final payouts:

1. Vitaly Lunkin — $1,891,012
2. Isaac Haxton — $1,168,566
3. Greg Raymer — $774,927
4. Dani Stern — $548,315
5. Justin Bonomo — $413,166
6. Alec Torelli — $329,730
7. Lex Veldhuis — $277,940
8. Noah Schwartz — $246,834
9. Ted Forrest — $230,317