The 39th Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) was held from inside the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, from May 30 to July 15, 2008.
The penultimate event on the 55-event schedule was the marquee $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Championship which started on July 3 with four starting flights. The 6,844-entrant field created a prize pool of over $64.4 million that paid the final 666 finishers.
Peter Eastgate of Odense, Denmark, would become the youngest player to win the WSOP Main Event when he defeated Ivan Demidov of Moscow, Russia, heads-up to claim the $9,152,416 in first-place prize. The record that Eastgate broke belonged to Phil Hellmuth of Palo Alto, California, for 19 years following his breakout win in the 1989 WSOP Main Event.
Hellmuth dominates the 2008 WSOP Main Event Top 5 Hands video on PokerGO with two appearances. Hellmuth kicks off the countdown with a big pot on the feature table against Adam Levy of Coral Springs, Florida, before playing a hand where his ace-king hits the muck. On that same feature table, Jean-Robert Bellande of Las Vegas, Nevada, celebrates a little too early as a shocking runner-runner bad beat follows.
Eastgate hits an incredible two-outer on the river to see the final table reduced to four players, while the final hand on the countdown is one of the most incredible beats in WSOP history. Heading to the river, Justin Phillips of Gladstone, Oregon, held the nut straight while Motoyuki Mabuchi of Las Vegas, Nevada, needed to improve on his top set. The final card would improve Mabuchi to quads, but it simultaneously improved Phillips to a royal flush and led to the top hand for 2008.
Watch PokerGO’s 2008 WSOP Main Event Top 5 hands now to see where each hand ranks.
About the World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker® is the largest, richest and most prestigious gaming event in the world, having awarded more than $3.29 billion in prize money and the prestigious gold bracelet, globally recognized as the sport’s top prize. Featuring a comprehensive slate of tournaments in every major poker variation, the WSOP is poker’s longest-running tournament in the world, dating back to 1970. In 2019, the event attracted 187,298 entrants from 118 different countries to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and awarded more than $293 million in prize money. In addition, the WSOP has formed groundbreaking alliances in broadcasting, digital media and corporate sponsorships, while successfully expanding the brand internationally with the advent of WSOP Europe in 2007 and the WSOP Asia-Pacific in 2013 and the WSOP International Circuit Series in 2015. All WSOP events are subject to the then-current and applicable WSOP tournament rules. For more information, please visit www.wsop.com.