Las Vegas professional poker player Joe Tehan won the PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) $5,000 buy-in No Limit Holdem Main Event last night, eliminating the final 7 opponents for a 1st place prize of $725,000.

Joe Tehan is an experienced professional poker tournament player with more than $2.2 million in live winnings on the major tournament circuits.  His previous claim to fame was winning the WPT Mandalay Bay Poker Championship in 2006. Since then he also came runner up in the 2006 Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic, part of the WPT Season 5.

The other opponents at the NAPT final table who Tehan had to beat included UB pro Michael Binger, Pocket Fives legend Chris DeMaci, PokerStars pro Jason Mercier, Team PokerStars Canada pro Anh Van Nguyen, and Al Grimes, Ray Henson, Michael Binger and Jake Tooles.

After his victory, the 2nd largest cash prize in his tournament career, Tehan told PokerStars officials , “I ran really, really good today. I won a lot of coin flips. I won all of the hands that were 50-50. It feels great. I’m happy with the way I played.  “This was a great experience. The turnouts at NAPT events have been getting bigger and bigger. I mean, this is a $5,000 tournament with over 700 players. I don’t play much outside of Vegas or LA, so to get a turnout like this in LA was good. I was excited to come down and play and I’m glad I did.”

Already the PocketFives community is bemoaning the loss of their community member Chris DeMaci, who came 2nd in a tough heads up clash with Joe Tehan and forking out a compensatory $440,000 cash prize for his attempts.  The final hand that cracked DeMaci was when he moved his chips in on top pair with K4 on a K35 board, but Tehan’s K10 gave him a better kicker and the 5 and 4 on the turn and river led to Tehan being crowned the first ever NAPT champion.

It’s not all bad news however, since Demaci’s 2nd place finish gave him his largest live cash to date, more than quadruple his $99,000 cash prize for coming 7th in the $1500 NLH Event at the 2010 WSOP.  DeMaci’s total winnings and poker bankroll now exceeds $1 million, according cardplayer.com.  His alias’s at Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars are RuberbandMan and DeMaci respectively.

Final NAPT Standings:

1: Joe Tehan – $725,000
2: Chris DeMaci – $440,000
3: Al Grimes – $250,000
4: Anh Van Nguyen – $195,000
5: Ray Henson – $145,000
6: Michael Binger – $114,000
7: Jason Mercier – $84,857
8: Jake Toole – $60,000

If you decide you want to go and help releave UB pro Michael Binger of some of his $114,ooo he just won, check out UB. Just make sure you use a UB Referral Code when signing up to get a great bonus.

Tags: Joe Tehan, Joe Tehan Wins NAPT LA, NAPT, NAPT LA, North American Poker Tour, Pocket Fives legend Chris DeMaci, PokerStars, Pokerstars NAPT, PokerStars pro Jason Mercier, Team PokerStars Canada pro Anh Van Nguyen, UB pro Michael Binger

This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.