Nenad “Serb” Medic is the winner of the first tournament of the 2008 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

The Serbian poker pro beat out American poker pro Andy Bloch in final heads-up play to win WSOP Event #1, a $10,000 buy-in, pot-limit Texas hold ‘em tourney that had 352 entrants and a total prize pool of about $3.3 million.

For his big win, Medic earned $794,112 and his first career WSOP championship gold bracelet.

Runnerup Bloch took home $488,048.

He is the same Andy Bloch who is also a top blackjack player.

In fact, Bloch was part of the famed MIT group that won millions of dollars from casinos years ago by using a sophisticated system to count cards, and whose story was made into a movie–”21”–earlier this year.

Finishing in third in Event #1 was top female pro Kathy Liebert, who pocketed $306,064.

Television poker commentator Mike Sexton finished fourth and wacky hooded poker pro Phil “Unabomber” Laak took ninth.

Also participating in Event #1 were Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson, Greg “Fossilman” Raymer, Chris Moneymaker, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Jamie Gold, Berry Johnston, Tom McEvoy, Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu, Phil “Poison” Ivey, Jen Tilly, Jen Harman, Erik Seidel, Alex “The Mad Russian” Kravchenko, Howard “The Professor” Lederer, Gavin Smith, Orel Hershiser, Beth Shak, Humberto Brenes, Shannon Elizabeth and John Juanda.

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