Athanasios Polychronopoulos Wins Gold in Event #48 ($650,223)

[user196975]

Level 33 : 100,000/200,000, 30,000 ante

After four long days of play Athanasios Polychronopoulos claimed his first gold bracelet in his first WSOP final table appearance. Polychronopoulos had to return for a fourth day of action and out last Simon Charette, Peter Ippolito and Yevgeniy Timoshenko in order to take home the $650,223 prize.

WSOP heavyweight Matt Stout made the final table but bowed out in 8th place late in Day 3. When the final table reached five-handed play, the chip lead exchanged numerous times with each player becoming the chipleader at one point or another. Sebastian Winkler was the last player eliminated in Day 3 after being near the top of the leaderboard on Day 1 and Day 2.

Runner up Simon Charette had an up and down day. He went from chipleader to under a million to chipleader within the span of 40 minutes. A few key double ups from Ippolito allowed him to take some momentum into heads up play.

But when it got down to Polychronopoulos and Charette, it was all Polychronopoulos. He nearly claimed the bracelet during in a hand where he flopped a set of fours against Charette's {A-Clubs} {9-Diamonds} . Charette was left with barely two big blinds and the writing was on the wall that this was Polychronopoulos' tournament to win.

With another tournament in the books the WSOP Main Event isn't that far off -- only a week away. Be sure to follow all the WSOP action live on Pokernews.com.