Funking for the triple Crown

2011 World Series of Poker
Event #2: $25,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'em Championship

Jake Cody Wins

Well, this just in: Jake Cody is a sicko. Less than 15 months removed from his first major tournament victory, Jake Cody has completed his climb to the top of poker's highest mountain. At the tender age of 22, Cody has joined just two other men in achieving poker's Triple Crown. His EPT victory came in Deuville, France in January of last year, and he followed that up with another major title at WPT London just a few months later, Now today, in just his second WSOP event, he's added that elusive (or not so elusive, in Cody's case) bracelet to his trophy case. It's hard to overstate how impressive of an accomplishment it is.

Perhaps it's his soft-spoken tone or his haphazardly spiked hair. Something about Jake Cody indicates he's not much of a threat. But that's not exactly the case. Spurred on by an astoundingly loud cheering section of his countrymen, Cody blasted through his matches today. He used up only one of his three bullets to take all 4.8 million of Yevgeniy Timoshenko's chips, locking up the gold bracelet and sending his throng of supporters into a frenzy. It really was an impressive lesson in heads-up poker from a man who has a strange propensity for being underestimated.

Cody's path to this final was no cakewalk either. He knocked off Brandon Adams in the first round, then bested 2010 Player of the Year Frank Kassela to punch his ticket to to Day 2. Dani Stern was no match for him in their Round 3 contest, and Cody advanced through Jonathan Jaffe in the fourth round to move into the money. He had just one match to play on Day 3, but he admitted in his interviews that Anthony Guetti was his toughest challenge to that point. Cody was dangerously short-stacked for a good while during that match, but he stood his ground and battled back valiantly to take all the chips and earn his spot among today's final four.

Cody's semifinal match was one for the ages. If anyone has so thoroughly beaten Gus Hansen, we can't remember when it happened. Just like the final, Cody needed just one bullet to dispense with Hansen in a lopsided battle that went the opposite way many would have guessed. In the final, Yevgeniy Timoshenko put up a good battle, but Cody was just too much. In what had to be his toughest two tests, he didn't need any of his add-on buttons. Not even one.

So then, the second gold bracelet of the 2010 World Series of Poker goes to the young Brit, Jake Cody. With it comes the Triple Crown, and a good bit of exposure on national television, and more than $850,000 in U.S. dollars. Out of those, we're guessing the Triple Crown means most to the young Brit, and we at PokerNews send our congrats out to Cody and his countrymen for a truly impressive showing here this week!

Two events in, it's already shaping up to be the Year of the Brits in Las Vegas