A 26-year-old slacker from suburban New York City who hates hard work and thus became a poker player has seen his life plan amazingly work out.

Jason Young of Suffern, New York, USA, has won Event #17 at the 2008 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, a $1,500 buy-in, no-limit Texas hold ‘em shootout tournament that had 1,000 entrants and a total prize pool of about $1.3 million. The Top 100 finishers cashed.

For the victory, Young collects $335,565 and his first career WSOP championship gold bracelet.

Not bad for a self-described goldbrick.

Finishing runnerup in the tourney was Mike Schwartz of North Hollywood, California, USA, earning $209,527.

Third was John Strzemp of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, earning $129,675.

Fourth was Rory Monahan of Murphysboro, Illinois, USA, earning $82,582.

Fifth was Matt Giannetti of Las Vegas, earning $40,267.

Sixth was Kyle Bowker of Walton, New York, USA, earning $23,887.

Seventh was Sergey “Gypsy” Rybachenko of Moscow, Russia, earning $15,697.

Eighth was Tom West of Los Gatos, California, USA, earning $12,421.

Ninth was Alexander Triner of Rockville, Maryand, USA, earning $9,828.

Tenth was Casey Coleman of Kingston, Ontario, Canada, earning $7,507.

As for young winner Young, he told reporters after the victory that he recently quit his not-exactly-demanding job as a Parks and Recreation Department employee because it was too much work.

“I always wanted a job where I didn’t have to work very hard,” the real-life version of Bart (”Underachiever and proud of it!”) Simpson remarked.

“I mean, I want to work, but I wanted to enjoy other things,” Young said. “So I found poker. But, after playing 29 hours in two days in this tournament, it looks like this is the wrong job to take it easy.”

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)