Party Poker Crowns Phil Laak New World Poker Open Champ

Yesterday we brought you word of the impending induction of Party Poker’s own Mike Sexton into the Poker Hall of Fame. And now there’s another name out of Party Poker on everyone’s lis, and it too happens to be a familiar one: Phil Laak, known “fondly” as the Unabomber in the poker world for the zippered hooded sweatshirt he always embeds himself in during game play. Well as of October 15, he is the new PartyPoker World Poker Open Champion, and his total career poker winnings have shot up by another $250,000.

Phil was a dark horse in the competition as early on his chip stack shrunk by nearly 90% (first from 300,000 to 187,000 and then to a miserable 47,000), and he almost got eliminated on a lucky A-J vs. A-Q by Luke “Full_Flush1″) Schwartz, but he pushed through and come out on top, besting other well-known players like Andy Black and other Party Poker representatives Bodo Sbrzesny and actress/poker shark Jennifer Tilly. Plus, as it turns out Mike Sexton himself was in the game – bolstering Laak’s bragging rights even higher.

Now here’s the part that matters most to us everyday, non-celebrity, non-professional online poker players: the runner-up, falling only to Laak himself, was one of our own – an amateur who qualified for his seat in the 2009 World Open V online at a Party Poker satellite, Jan Veit of Austria. Also of interest to prospective online qualifiers: the runner-up, Veit, was the player to eliminate Tilly, Sbrzesny, and Black.