Amateur poker player Glen Witmer gave Full Tilt Poker pro Gavin Smith a lesson of patience and perseverance in the heads up action to take down the WPT North American Championship and the $1,090,589 first-place prize. Witmer started the event as an unknown face in the professional poker circuit with no major poker tournament cashes and no victories in his career, however, the 67-year-old player demonstrated that you don’t have to spend your whole life jumping from tournament to tournament to beat a pro and win a huge bag.

 

"That doesn't bother me at all. A lot of those players play together quite a bit. They know each other and they know how they play. This is the first time they've had to play against me and I think it's a bit of an advantage," he said.

 

Witmer qualified for the WPT North American Poker Championship by playing a $170 satellite last month, then he worked his way through two more qualifying tournaments before securing his seat in the Main Event. Witmer outlasted a field of 454 participants by playing his game patiently and not getting intimidated by the competition, which eventually helped him to end up among the chip leaders on Day 4. The field was finally reduced to six players for Thursday's final table and it took about three hours for the first player to be eliminated. Next kiss the rail was Mark Karam, a professional with more than $2 million in earnings. He was eliminated by Witmer when the two went head-to-head in a two-million chip pot. Ryan Fisler, another Canadian finished fourth, scoring his best payoff ever. Kathy Liebert, who set a new record as the highest-earning female poker player in tournament finished in third place, winning $277,684. Heads-up play lasted nearly 50 hands, when Smith finally moved all in with pocket 5s versus Witmer’s A-K. The flop and turned both looked good for Smith, but he was busted when an Ace fell on the river.

 

Here are the full final table results:

 

1st – Glen Witmer - $$1,090,589

2nd – Gavin Smith - $532,545

3rd – Kathy Liebert - $277,684

4th – Ryan Fisler - $228,234

5th – Marc Karam - $171,175

6th – James Trenholm - $133,137

 

The next World Poker Tour event is the WPT Festa al Lago at the Bellagio on October 20^th, followed by the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic coming up in early December and the WPT Southern Poker Championship going on in Biloxi in January, 2009.