On the U.S. tournament circuit, Michael Keiner might have been a dark horse to win a gold bracelet at the 2007 World Series of Poker. That wasn’t the case in his native Germany, where Keiner is known as an accomplished poker professional.

The former plastic surgeon trounced a table full of pros and academic heavyweights to win the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud championship and his first bracelet.

The win marked the third time in WSOP history a German player finished first in a tournament; Matthias Rohnacher picked up a bracelet in 1997, Keiner’s pal Eddy Scharf holds two from the 2001 and 2003 Series' and, just days after the good doctor’s win, Katja Thater earned one in Razz, upping the total German bracelet count to four.

Keiner has been competing in European tournaments for years, often winning and frequently final tabling events. His 2007 win was the German’s seventh cash at the event, the earliest of which was in 2000.

There might have been some extra incentive for Keiner to nail down a gold bracelet in 2007, however, after enduring perpetual ribbing from Scharf about not having one. When Keiner spoke at tournaments or in poker rooms, Scharf was known to reply by shouting that he couldn’t hear him over the jangle of his two bracelets.

By concentrating on games other than Hold’em in smaller playing fields, Keiner was halfway there. But before he could claim the bracelet, he had to beat out a final table with two former attorneys, a tech-sector entrepreneur and a Harvard M.B.A. that included pros Barry Greenstein and Greg Raymer.

Away from poker, the German pro is a successful businessman who made his fortune on the stock market during the 1990s. Though he may have made plenty of cash through wise investments, Keiner also claims to have lost millions playing the market.