Years ago, Ivan Demidov was a professional gamer, first appearing in StarCraft: Broodwar competitions as a member of the famed Russian team "orky". He continued his career with Age of Empires, even attending WCG 2002 representing Russia in the aforementioned title.

After that, he was found competing with SK Gaming in Warcraft III competition, later retiring to play professional poker, as so many professional gamers do. Ivan was invited to join team PokerStars.net, after which he won the seat at the World Series of Poker main event final table.

The final table was all one-sided, the overall winner of the tournament, Peter Eastgate from Denmark, dictated his game to the other eight finalists.

Ivan Demidov had successfully made his way through seven opponents before facing Eastgate in his final head-to-head match.

Winning the final pot and eliminating Demidov in the last hand with a 2-5 straight saw Eastgate crowned the new 2008 WSOP champion.

The prize pool distribution:

1 $9,152,416 Peter Eastgate
2 $5,809,595 Ivan Demidov
3 $4,517,773 Dennis Phillips
4 $3,774,974 Ylon Schwartz
5 $3,096,768 Scott Montgomery
6 $2,418,562 Darus Suharto
7 $1,772,650 David «Chino» Rheem
8 $1,288,217 Kelly Kim
9 $900,670 Craig Marquis