Break out the tea and crumpets (or the fish and chips)!

The first British winner at the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas is John-Paul Kelly.

Kelly, 23, from Aylesbury, England, has won WSOP Event #20, a pot-limit Texas hold ‘em tournament that had a $1,500 buy-in, an $864, 045 prize pool, 633 entrants and 63 payouts.

For the victory, he earns his first career WSOP championship gold bracelet–and $194,434.

That should buy a lot of crumpets (or chips).

Taking second in the tourney was Marc Tschirch of Reyklinghausen, Germany, who snags $120,102.

Coming in third was Jason Dewitt of Granger, Indiana, USA, earning $78,826.

Big poker names finishing in the money in the event include Erik Seidel in seventh place and Mike Sexton in 37th.

At a press conference after his victory, Kelly said: “This has to be the highlight of my life.”

He also said: “I’m pretty down to earth. I take it in stride. I started playing poker when I was 18. I was able to get good at it. I was able to win some events in the U.K. and then got good playing online as well. I always enjoyed playing sports.

“Playing poker was something I was interested in because it was competitive for me. The competitive edge I had in sports is now transferred over to poker. I can’t explain it really. I just took if very seriously, even from the age of 16. I was always reading. I was interested from an early age.”?

The last British citizen to win a WSOP bracelet was Ram Vaswani in 2007.

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