Aaron Gustavson grins from ear to ear after winning EPT London.

Aaron Gustavson came to the final table of the European Poker Tour London event as the last American standing and will leave Jolly Ol’ England with an EPT title and £850,000 after eliminating reigning world champion Peter Eastgate heads-up.

The final table lasted a little more than seven hours and Gustavson maintained the chip lead for most of that time. He eliminated Raymond Wu, Dominic Cullen, Nikolai Senninger and Eastgate along the way. Eastgate eliminated only one player, Rui Milhomens, in sixth spot. When heads-up play began Gustavson had 14,000,000 to the 7,800,000 of Eastgate. The duel didn’t last long.

Only 20 minutes after the final two players returned from their dinner break the tournament was over. After losing over 2 million chips to Gustavson early Eastgate found himself in need of some help. On the final hand of the night Eastgate opened with a raise to 350,000, Gustavson replied with a re-raise to 900,000 and Eastgate moved all-in. Gustavson snap-called and showed A Q to the chagrin of Eastgate who tabled A 9. The board missed Eastgate and he had to settle for being the bridesmaid this time around.

Since making the final table of the 2008 WSOP Main Event last July the Dane has gone on quite an impressive run. At the 2008 EPT London he finished 18th. He followed that up with an 83rd place finish at the 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure championship event and a win in a $5,000 PCA side event. He then returned to the Rio in Las Vegas and made another deep run in the WSOP Main Event eventually finishing 78th.

This is Gustavson’s first major win. The 23-year-old earned a win and a runner-up at the Borgata Summer Open in June and has some online scores to his credit including the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up last July.

The next European Poker Tour event is EPT Warsaw which begins October 20.

2009 EPT London Final Table Payouts

1. Aaron Gustavson - £850,000
2. Peter Eastgate - £530,000
3. Nikolai Senninger - £285,000
4. Martin Gudvangen - £227,000  
5. Dominic Cullen - £173,000
6. Rui Milhomens - £124,000  
7. Raymond Wu - £87,000  
8. Karim Bennani - £50,100

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