In our series about the greatest WSOP personalities, the winner of last year's WSOP certainly can't be overlooked.

Jerry Yang won the Main Event of the 2007 World Series of Poker. The Laos-born American had to prevail against 6538 opponents in order to win the $ 8,250,000 prize money and the highest award in poker.

The 40-year old family man was one of the more taciturn winners of the world championship title. Sponsors normally seize on such a prestigious title-holder and the new champion travels the globe from tournament to tournament from that point onwards. Not so Yang - the father of six moved to a new house in California and has since played only a few tournaments without any noteworthy success.

His final table in 2007 took place without the involvement of some very well-known faces. Scotty Nguyen, the last doyen of poker in the running, exited in eleventh spot before the final table.

Nevertheless, Yang's competition was still made up of experienced tournament players and poker newcomers, such as the online pro Hevad Khan who sometimes likes to play more than 20 single-table tournaments at the same time when online.

Jerry Yang showed exceptionally aggressive play during the final table. Early on, he managed to double his starting stack and directly attacked the chip leader, Philip Hilm. It created the perfect sensation of the day when Yang succeeded in taking the tournament favourite out of the game first, moving into the undisputed lead. At this stage, he already had a third of all of the game's chips in his possession.

Following this, Jerry Yang was able to continue to build on his advantage. When only four players were left in the tournament, the situation looked as follows:

Jerry Yang - 71,300,000

Raymonde Rahme - 30,000,000

Tuan Lam - 17,400,000

Alexander Kravchenko - 8,700,000

However, the game went against the chip leader in the hours that followed. The Russian, Kravchenko, in particular was able to build on his stack due to Yang's bad luck. But this also turned. Yang went 88 all-in and beat the Russian, who had AK.

As the undisputed chip leader, Yang was able to eliminate Raymonde Rahme shortly after that and then went head-to-head against Tuan Lam from Canada with a 5-1 chip lead.

The duel of USA versus Canada ended with Yang winning again with two eights against his opponent's all-in hand, thereby deciding the tournament.

With this victory, Jerry Yang had played himself into the illustrious circle of Main Event champions - an unsurpassable accolade in poker. His name shall henceforth be mentioned in the same breath as poker icons such as Doyle Brunson, Stu Ungar, Johnny Chan and Chris Ferguson.

Before the start of this year's WSOP, Yang declared that he would underscore his 2007 achievement with another bracelet at this year's WSOP. He has had to listen too often to claims that he wasn't a worthy winner of the mega tournament.

It will be a hard tournament. There's a big target on my back. I am going to have to come up with my best play, said the WSOP champion in relation to his defence of the title in the summer.

Eurosport