Gavin Griffin is no strange to the poker scene, and in 2004 he became the youngest player ever to win a WSOP bracelet, but despite winnings exceeding $300,000 before this tournament Griffin has not played much poker of late, focusing instead on raising money for cancer charities since his girlfriend was diagnosed with the illness.

Griffin made it to the final table of the prestigious tournament with the most chips, and despite a couple of setbacks along the way he netted the first place after an epic 92 hand heads-up battle with Canada’s Marc Karam.

When the final hand began both players were still almost level on chips, although Griffin had a slight advantage. Griffin opened the betting with a preflop raise but Marc Karam quickly re-raised to 500k. Griffin called and they saw a flop of 2-3-4. Karam immediately bet out another 500k and this time it was Griffin who raised, making it 2 million to play. After a short think Karam moved all-in, putting Griffin to the test for almost all his chips.

It proved a tough decision for Griffin, who sat and thought for some time before finally calling, declaring “I think you have the best hand” as he flipped over K-5 for an up and down straight draw. Karam peeked at his cards and said: “shit! I just have a pair of fours” before turning over 7-4. As it happened Karam’s pair of fours were indeed the best hand, but only by a tiny fraction of 51-49. This was as close to a coin flip as you could get.

A three of hearts on the river gave Karam the edge going into the river, but the king of hearts on the river gave Griffin a pair of kings and with it the title. He picked up €1,825,010 while Marc Karam collected €1,061,820 for second.

(The UK’s Steve Jelinek and Ram Vaswani also made the final table, finishing sixth and eight respectively).