Peter Eastgate may only be 22 years old – a mere baby in some people’s eyes – but the kid is now a whopping nine million dollars richer after being crowned the 2008 World Series of Poker No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em Main Event Champion (that’s a mouthful.) The Danish Poker Pro surpassed Phil Hellmuth as the youngest champion since the inception of the tournament.

After 6,844 contestants and countless hours of arduous play, it came down to the final two, but Russian Ivan Demidov was severely over matched by Eastgate who won the final hand on a river card wheel straight as Demidov went all-in with two pair.

“It kind of summed up the heads up. I had him crippled to below 20 million and I was lucky that he hit two pair where I hit the wheel,” said an elated Eastgate following the win. “It was kind of inevitable for those two hands to get it all in.

And about the new record that Eastgate has set… “I wasn’t thinking about the records or anything like that. I just was thinking about playing my game. I spoke to (Hellmuth) yesterday. He wished me luck and gave me a handshake”

Mighty nice of you, Philly.

Even though he didin’t go home with “the bracelet”, Ivan Demidov still raked in close to six million dollars for his second place finish. “I really had no idea how he was going to play heads-up and he has way more experience than me,” the Russian said. “So maybe I was playing a bit passive and sometimes I made the bad calls when I should have just folded,” “I still called way too much and it cost me a lot of chips. I also made a few big bluffs at the wrong time.”

Yo Ivan – You want some cheese with that whine? Listen, I do the same exact crap when I play but ya never see me to put a cool six mil in my pocket – so please do the Zman a favor and kindly just STFU!

-ZMAN

Here’s a look at the final standings…

1st Peter Eastgate $9,152,416

2nd Ivan Demidov $5,790,024