Sacre bleu!

A French-Canadian has won Event #2 at the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) in London, England.

He is Erik Cajelais, a 27-year-old professional poker player from Lachenaie, Quebec, Canada, and on Wednesday he won a split tournament that featured pot-limit Texas hold ‘em and pot-limit Omaha.

The tourney had a buy-in of 2,500 British pounds, or about $4,100 U.S.

There were 158 participants in the event, with payouts going to the top 18 finishers.

The total prize pool for the tournament was 395,000 pounds, or about $648,000.

For the big win–Cajelais’ first-ever career offline tournament victory–he earned 104,677 pounds, or about $172,000, plus a WSOPE championship gold bracelet.

He now has earned almost $1.7 million in his career playing offline tourneys.

“I felt like I really, really, really wanted to win,” Cajelais said at a post-tournament press conference. “I had to do everything I could to win and today I played well and the cards came out my way.”

Finishing as runnerup in the tourney was Mats Gavatin of Lidingo, Sweden, who earned 64,705 pounds.

Taking third was Robin Keston of London, who earned 47,858 pounds.

Three top U.S. pros finished in the money in the event.

Men “The Master” Nguyen finished fourth, Hoyt Corkins finished sixth and Howard “The Professor” Lederer finished ninth.

The format for Event #2 was to play nine hands of pot-limt Texas hold ‘em and then nine hands of pot-limit Omaha and then continue to switch back and forth at that rate.

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