THE 2009 World Series of Poker concluded in Las Vegas last week with a stirring finish. Holding less than 1 percent of chips on the final table of nine players, a 21-year-old Detroit man, Joe Cada, rallied to capture the $8.5 million winner's pot.

It's those kinds of miracle finishes that keep Concord native and Oakland resident Pete Kremenliev dreaming about his own big payday, particularly after the 29-year-old lasted five days at this year's WSOP in July and finished 280th out of more than 6,400 players. He pocketed a tidy sum of $32,963.

"I could definitely see myself at the final table and winning someday," said Kremenliev. "Once you get down to the last couple hundred people, it becomes very realistic at that point. It's just another couple days of things going well."

For now, he'll settle for his more modest WSOP cash and his comfortable living as a full-time poker player even though he only started playing seriously five years ago. Like many young standouts, the 1999 Ygnacio Valley High graduate was drawn to the game by the poker movie "Rounders" as well as amateur Chris Moneymaker's run from Cinderella online entry to WSOP champion in 2004.

While a member of the Ygnacio Valley swimming and water polo teams, Kremenliev can recall playing in a few penny-ante poker games, and while at UCLA as a math major, he would play in friendly games with pals, usually for very low stakes. So when he

"I really never thought too seriously about it until after I had graduated because I was at a point where I was looking for actual jobs," he said. "I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my math degree, so it was right around that point that I started playing online poker. After 5-6 months I realized I could make a decent amount of money at it, and it was more exciting and fun than the jobs I was looking at."

Kremenliev read every poker book he thought could help him improve his skills. He participated in Internet forums where other people discussed strategies, and it dawned on him that these individuals were all playing cards for a living and that he could as well. So he began playing no-limit hold 'em online with a vengeance, often several tables at a time at PokerStars.net.

He actually won his seat at this year's WSOP through a tournament he played online at PokerStars, which operates outside the U.S. on the Isle of Man in the United Kingdom. Because of stipulations in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act passed by Congress in 2006, PokerStars simply wired him the $10,000 buy-in fee and he had the option to keep the cash or jump into the Las Vegas tournament. He elected to play, and was glad he did.

After 21/2 days, Kremenliev was among the WSOP's top five chip leaders. He even got a little TV time when he played at a table with past winner Berry Johnston, well-known pro Todd Brunson and actor-comedian Brad Garrett from "Everybody Loves Raymond." Kremenliev actually eliminated Garrett on the third day.

"The hand itself took 10 minutes because (Garrett) made a whole scene out of it, had the whole table cracking up," he said. "That was definitely the most fun day I had there. It was just a crazy table. There were TV cameras shooting every hand."

Kremenliev made it to Day 5 of the event and was one of 407 players left with a decent stack of chips. But then he hit a bad streak.

"It was one of those days where I didn't really win a hand," he said. "It was strange, because every other day things were falling right. There were only three or four hands where I actually put any amount of money in. I finally went all-in with an ace-jack, another other guy had ace-king and I just didn't get lucky."

Kremenliev does believe his math degree has helped him become a successful player because he can compute probabilities in his head that others can't. He is now considering a return to graduate school in order to work on the psychology aspect of his game.

"Math and psychology are probably the two biggest things if you want to be really good," he said. "You have to know the numbers and probabilities. But you also have to know how people react."

And how do his longtime friends react to his vocation?

"They're mostly positive, but some of them are surprised, especially with the Internet aspect of it," he said. "A lot of people don't really know how big Internet poker is. Any given afternoon at PokerStars, there will be 200,000 people playing from around the world."

Kremenliev is one of the better ones, and perhaps a lucky run from becoming one of the very best.

Contact Carl Steward at csteward@bayareanewsgroup.com.