Category: Live Poker Tournaments

Many people thought it would never happen but Jakub Michalak has been crowned the ISPT Wembley 2013 champion after a great day’s poker play at Wembley Stadium. The final table was played out in a suite overlooking the pitch as opposed to on the hallowed turf but if there was one immediate benefit from this, it was the fact that the victor didn’t have to climb all of those stairs to collect the trophy and the all-important cheque. I suppose when you win you find an extra source of energy somewhere but some players must find those stairs a great strain at the end of the game! Not that this have been on the mind of Jakub Michalak although he will no doubt celebrate as though he won the FA Cup or Champions League final.

The second last day of the ISPT event at Wembley saw twenty hopefuls whittled down to the final six players, who would all return on Wednesday the 5th of June to see who the 1 million euro winner would be. Of course, the fact that deals are always likely to be made means that the actual winner may bag less than 1 million euros but getting a huge sum of money and winning a prestigious poker tournament at Wembley Stadium is likely to be all that a poker player really needs!

A lot of poker players went quickly

The tournament exits came thick and fast at the start of play on Tuesday with players like James Sullivan, Neil Bernadout, Giuseppe Stagno, Leon Louis, Leigh Wiltshire and even WSOP bracelet winner (two times) Praz Bansi were making the lonely walk from Wembley Stadium. They were quickly followed by Florian Hoeller, Freddy Deeb and Dave Ulliott, the man the poker world knows as “Devilfish”.

Bassam Elia was next to go and although there would have been disappointment in finishing in 11th place, the thought of grabbing €19,000 would certainly help to cheer him up! Jean Miguel Lacerda was out in 10th and the final table had been achieved. During the break, there were discussions about making a split of the cash at this point but this was shouted down and at the final 9, the money up for grabs was still along the lines of the original tournament layout. The players who crashed out before the end of the day were Julian Gardner, Jerome Brion and Ferhad Seyadi.

This left the final six players, and their chip count as Pete Linton (11,070,000), Alban Juen (7,615,000), Gwendoline Janot (6,230,000), Nick Hicks (6,230,000), Jakub Michalak (4,825,000) and Xavier el Fassy (4,555,000).

Into the final day and sadly, Gwendoline Janot, the final female player left in the tournament crashed out in 6th place. At least there was a prize of €73,000 (officially but indications about a deal being made would see Janot grab €243,000) to make her feel better. She was quickly followed by Alban Juen in 5th.

There was a bit of a shock in 4th place as Pete Linton crashed out, and he was the big favourite going into the final day. Yet again, sometimes the pressure gets to players and if you get misfortune running against you, the game can run against you. Pete did seem fairly relaxed in his post-tournament interview but he was able to take it in his stride. The fact that he usually plays PLO games and he bagged a great deal of money in the process (unofficially it seems as though Pete takes home €290,000) will definitely keep him satisfied for a good while yet.

Nick Hicks crashed out in third place and he was quite philosophical about his performance in the final day, which he felt was not up to scratch. Nick blamed this on a big lack of sleep in the past few days but even with that in mind, third place is not a bad finish. He got a third place medal as well as more than €200,000 so the Dusk Till Dawn player definitely had a lot to be proud of. This left Jakub Michalak and Xavier el Fassy for the head to head but there could only be one winner with Jakub Michalak grabbing the top prize after Xavier went all in and didn’t get the vital King he was looking for.

After last week’s fun with Charlotte Jackson, Sky Poker is keeping their name in the headlines with the fact that the next event in the 2013 tour is taking place in Birmingham this week. Saturday the 8th of June is the day when the action goes to the Broadway Casino Hall in Birmingham and there is still a great chance of getting involved. Not too many people would recommend that you take a trip to Birmingham at the best of times but when there is a big Sky Poker event on, it makes sense to have a look at what is on offer.

The buy-in direct option has been open for a considerable time and there is still time to do so. At a £110 buy-in deal, it isn’t too bad and many players will decide that this is a fair price to play for the £15,000 guaranteed amount. You have to make your choices in life and if guaranteeing your seat with some cash will help you to get underway in a tournament, it makes sense to do so.

However, there are still satellite events that are open in the run-up to this event so if you would rather keep your cash for yourself, there is still an opportunity to do so. You don’t need to spend a lot of money if you don’t want to and the sense of achievement that comes from making your way through a satellite qualifier to the main event is definitely something that will put an extra spring in the step of most poker players.

There have been four different satellite events running for this Sky Poker Tour event and they have all been running every day. This is definitely the sort of thing that pleases people and the best news is that there have been a variety of price ranges for players to choose from.

Grab the chance of a Birmingham seat

The Sky Poker Tour Birmingham Frenzy satellite may only have a 1 in 50 chance of a seat at the main event but when you are only paying £2.40 for a seat, this is not too bad a price! If you want to take part in the Sky Poker Tour Birmingham Direct satellite, you have a 1 in 10 chance of a seat at the main event and the price rises to £12.

There is the Sky Poker Birmingham Satellite event which has guaranteed seats for the nightly semi-final on offer and this costs £5.20. However, if you want the most effective route for the final, the Sky Poker Tour Birmingham Semi, where there is a 1 in 5 chance of getting a seat for the main event, at £24 is likely to be your best bet.

The last Sky Poker Tour event in Dublin was a roaring success and there is nothing to suggest that the upcoming Birmingham event will be anything but a great time too. The Sky Poker brand is definitely moving upwards in the UK poker community these days.

There may still be one or two mutterings about the overlay but the great thing about the ISPT at Wembley was that the focus eventually fell on the poker. This was always likely to be the case at some point but with even the final hours before the tournament commenced showing more of an interest in cash than chips, there was a concern that there was going to be an overshadowing of the poker play. Once the action got underway on that Wembley turf, like so many times before, everything that was discussed and concerned about in the build-up was forgotten as the excitement and passion of play took over.

There is no doubt that many of the poker players involved would have been honoured to grace the Wembley turf. There is no doubt that the famous old stadium holds a special place in the heart of English football fans but plenty of other great historical events have taken place in Wembley Stadium. The Live Aid concert in the 1980s was a perfect example of people coming together to raise funds, raise awareness and to have a brilliant time. The ISPT event wasn’t along the lines of Live Aid but there was no doubt that plenty of people had a brilliant time on the Wembley turf.

Sunday the 2nd of June was the final day that poker players were getting to play on the Wembley turf. On the Monday, the play was moving indoors to the Bobby Moore suite. Moore was of course the famous captain when England won the World Cup in 1966 but if you are Scottish or Mexican, you will always have doubts about the jewellery that was found in Moore’s belongings at the 1970 World Cup. Regardless of that, Bobby Moore is someone who is loved all over the footballing world and the mere mention of his name will see some English football fans stand to attention.

Poker players were wilting quickly at Wembley

At the start of Sunday’s play, there were 421 players involved but at the end of the day, the tournament was down to 99 players. The leading player at the end of the Sunday and the pitch sessions was Ole Schemion. At this point he had managed to build up a stack of 1,534,000 chips. There were four players in total to break into the million level for chips but Ole was the clear leader and this would have been no surprise to anyone. By the age of 20, Ole has already managed to clock up more than $3m in live tournament earnings so this is a player that knows his way around the poker table.

Every player that made it past the Sunday stage into the Monday knew that they were making some money from the tournament, which is always a relief. Some of the big name players that survived the Sunday session were Sam Trickett, Tony G, Toby Lewis, Neil Bernadout, Marcel Luske and Boris Becker. There were some concerns that Boris would be another German to triumph at the home of English football but with so many other great players left in the event, this wasn’t the biggest concern at this point.

Monday turned out to be a quick day at the ISPT with only 20 players remaining at the end of the day. The chip leader at the end of Day 4 of the event, as he had been at the end of Day 1 and Day 2 was Alban Juen. Alban came to the event as a qualifier but by the end of Monday’s play, he held over 5 million chips.

One of the early players to bust out was Sam Trickett. Upon his exit, he immediately donated his $3,000 to the dealers and made his way to the airport to take part in the WSOP! That was quite a classy move and hopefully Sam can bag some big cash at the big WSOP event on Las Vegas.

Other players that made the top 10 were Dave Ulliott, Jean Miguel Lacerda, Florian Hoeller, Leigh Wiltshire, Gwendoline Jant, Xavier el fassy, Jakub Michalak, Pete Linton and Nick Hicks, all of whom were hoping to overtake Alban Juen.

If there is one thing that Scottish sportspeople seem to do very well, it is glorious failure. Andy Murray finally managed to buck this trend with his Grand Slam win in 2013 but for so long in his career it looked as though he would be another Scottish person who promised big and then just fell short. There is something about Scotland that seems to revel in the glorious failure and coming so close and now there has been a poker hard luck story to add to the tales of national woe!

Not that David Vamplew has anything to be ashamed of or really upset over. Most poker players around the world would love to get the chance to play at the WSOP 2013 event so getting to the final table of Event #2 was a huge achievement. Vamplew went all the way to second place in the $5,000 No Limit Hold ‘Em Eight-Handed Tournament. This tournament proved to be a big success and there were a great number of poker players who were involved with the final table being a very competitive place. Vamplew has already grabbed a European Poker Tour title, so he knows what it takes to see out a victory but sadly in this case he was not able to complete his journey.

Only one poker player was destined to win at the final table

Going into the final table, 7 of the 8 players held chip stacks that were between 432,000 and 629,000. This meant that there could have been a huge level of competition at the final table but you have to take into consideration the chip stack of the 8th player, Trevor Pope. Pope was the chip leader on a phenomenal 3,420,000 chips which made him the runaway leader and although chip stacks can change hand quickly and largely at a final table, most players expected Pope to remain in charge throughout the final table.

So it proved and going into the final head to head, the chip stack stood up as Vamplew on 550,000 chips while Pope held 6,650,000. Vamplew put up a valiant effort but it was done and dusted within 10 hands of play as Pope proved that chip leaders can sometimes get home in style and comfort!
For the win, Pope gets the all-important bracelet but he also managed to bag $553,906 for the glory of winning. In second place though, Vamplew helped himself to $342,450 which is an awful lot of money for one poker tournament. This huge amount takes Vamplew to a total of $2,539,059 in his career which is an amount of cash that no would be upset at picking up in their poker career!

Yet another GUKPT event is over and another player has risen to the top. Like most other poker tournaments, there were a few twists and turns along the way and the early favourites for the final table managed to fall away. Any observers seemed to agree on the fact that there were two excellent poker players giving it their all when it came to the end of the game but of course, when you start off with a final table, it can take a long time to get there.

The first player to drop out of the final table was Morgan Sorfleet. Sorfleet was one of the early chip leaders in the Day 1 events but his 9th placed ensured that he would be taking home £1,510. It is not a bad return for a weekend’s work but when you hold such a good position at certain times in a tournament, it is only naturally to be let down by such a turn of events. Sorfleet was turned out of the tournament by Khalick Mohangee and he didn’t waste much time in taking another player out of the Main Event.

A great run of poker at the final table

The next player to fall was Dennis Omahoney who would have to settle for £2,010 for finishing in eighth place. The next player to be taken out was Trevor Bowers and this time it wasn’t Khalick to blame, it was Dom Mahoney. Trevor ended up in 7th spot which was enough to bag £2,680. The player who ended up in sixth position was also taken out by Mahoney, which meant that two poker players had taken out four players between them. The player going home in 6th position was Adam Boutwell. Boutwell would take home £3,350 for his efforts in coming 6th.

Mahoney then got his hat-trick of taking players out when Blair Hampton, who had been the chip leader, crashed out in 5th place for £4,360. At this point the game slowed down which was just as well. The first five exits from the final table had taken place in the first hour, which indicates how much of a breathless opening it was to this poker tournament’s final table. In fourth place was Khalick Mohangee who became the fourth victim of Dom Mahoney in the final table! Khalick took home £5,520 for his efforts.

Next to go was Simon Skinner and it was no surprise to see Dom being the man once again to take him out. Third place at this event raked in £8,800 for his efforts. This saw Dom Mahoney and Nick Humphris going head to head and the battle raged from end to end. Dom initially held a great lead which Nick would claw back only for Dom to quickly race away again only for Nick to pull himself back into contention. This pattern continued for a while until Nick got his chance and managed to power home, making his lead and dominance count.

Nick Humphris grabbed the title and £16,500 but thanks to the deal struck between the two players, Dom actually managed to take home £17,850 for coming second.

A big Saturday event is always going to be ensure that Wembley Stadium is buzzing with excitement and the Day 2b event at Wembley Stadium for the ISPT Main Event was such an occasion. The two live days prior to this had seen a total of 761 entries for the live events, which was a good thing but there was no doubt that on Saturday, the talk of the event was still about the money that was needed to ensure that the pre-tournament promises would be lived up to.

In the current economic situation, the prize of €1m to the winner was always going to be a big draw but the thing is, there was a lot of doubt about the event going ahead. That was until Dusk Till Dawn stepped in to guarantee the money. This brought a lot of stability to the event but there is no doubt that it placed a large financial element on the company. It is not as if there was a winner takes prize for the poker players, the money dished out to the winner was just 20% of the overall prize pool so there was a big lot of money needed to make everyone happy. At the time of calculating on Saturday morning, it was looking as though DTD needed to find close to €600,000 to ensure that the first prize winner got all the money that was promised to them.

UK poker players got behind the event

It would be fair to say that the UK poker community was fully behind the event. There are always other poker events and tournaments to look out for so it is not as if everyone was able to play in the event but there was definitely a great turnout from some well-known UK names. There was also a big turn out from France, which is not a surprise considering how easy the main transport links between London and France are. There is an element of surprise at the lack of representation from Ireland though. Perhaps the fact that the Irish football team played at Wembley Stadium in midweek meant that there wasn’t the same desire or need to travel back to Wembley so soon! There was also a limited amount of players from Scandinavia at the big Wembley event.

There is usually a strong turn-out from Scandinavian players for major poker events and London is usually a city that they find themselves in on a regular basis. There were some big name Scandinavian poker players like Ramsi Jelassi, Michael Tureniec and Peter Eastgate but there was hope for a lot more than just these players. Perhaps there was not enough international promotion to capture the imagination of players and it may be that Wembley doesn’t hold the same sort of appeal to non-English players as it does for English poker players.

In the Saturday action itself, there had been hopes for the ISPT ambassador, Michael Mizrachi. The player that is known as “The Grinder” got off to a good start, reaching 150,000 chips but this high level disappeared almost as quickly as it came along. Before too long, Mizrachi was struggling on just over 30,000 chips and he was eliminated from the event shortly afterwards.

There was slightly better success for another ambassador for the ISPT, Liz Lieu. She managed to end the day with 70,200 chips, a considerably better amount than renowned poker player James Akenhead. At one point, Akenhead had broken through the 100,000 chips barrier but by the end of the Day 2 action, he found himself back down to the 44,700 level.

Sunday was going to be the final day of the event where the poker action would be played out on the Wembley turn. On Monday, the poker action moves indoors with the Bobby Moore suite being the venue for the climax to the ISPT Wembley event.

Not every poker player in the UK was heading to Wembley for the ISPT event; there were a number of poker players that were far more interested in the G Casino in Portsmouth. After the initial days jousting, there were a total of 55 players back at the popular casino and poker venue, looking to make their way down to the final 9 players that would make up the final table. The poker action took 10 hours to whittle the numbers down which meant that all of the players who got through deserved their cash.

The fact that this event is paying out to the top 13 ranked players means that everyone at the final table can bank on taking money home. While the ultimate aim was to make the final table with a good level of chips, there would have been plenty of poker players that were simply aiming to get higher than 14th. You never want to be the player that bursts the bubble but as sure as every tournament has a winner, every tournament must have a player that just misses out on the big money too. In this event, the unlucky player was Dale Simmons.

Bubbles must be burst at poker events

This exit ensured that every player still involved in the action would be taking home at least £1,000 with them. The first player to go out after the bubble had been burst was Andrew Miles who finished in 13th place. Once the bubble had been burst, there was a quick burst of players heading home with Paul Burbidge, Ellie Biessek and Fraser Beach following on quickly. Biessek had picked up the Genting Poker Series title in Newcastle and he was no doubt keen to follow up with more success but it wasn’t to be, although another cash finish is always going to be a pleasing aspect. When beach crashed out, this left 9 players and this brought a close to the day’s action as the final table numbers had been reached.

With respect to poker chips, in 9th position was Dennis Omahoney who had 85,500 chips and in 8th position was Adam Boutwell who had 136,000 chips. In 7th position was Trevor Bowers with 184,000 chips and in 6th place was Khalik Mohangee who was just ahead with 187,000 chips. The 200,000 chip mark was broken by Morgan Sorfleet in 5th place with 204,000 chips. There was then a massive jump up to 4th place and Dom Mahoney, who had 304,500 chips in place. In third was Simon Skinner with 492,500 chips and Nick Humphris was in second place with 505,500 chips. The leader for the event was Blair Hampton who held 554,000 chips.

There is no doubt that if you could choose to win a big poker event anywhere in the world, Las Vegas would be at the top end of destinations. There is something very special about this gaming and gambling location which means that people are always going to flock to it. It is such a famous and iconic name that the UK Pub Poker Championship decided to whisk all of the finalists across to Las Vegas for the final. This meant that there were some keen UK players who were pretty excited by the event but in the end it was Bobby Regan from Northumberland that managed to claim the title.

In the end, Bobby triumphed over thousands of poker players across the country and he was a very proud winner of the Vegas 100 Redtooth Poker title and the £5,000 prize money! Getting the chance to go to Las Vegas and play in a proper poker tournament is definitely something that will be appealing to many people but there is no doubt that the kudos that goes with winning the poker tournament is something that will always live with Bobby!

Bobby has been playing in the Tuesday night poker league at the Last Orders pub which can be found on Regent Street in Blyth. Bobby gave an interview to his local newspaper after his success.

I still can’t believe I won it, it hasn’t sunk in yet. The whole experience was class and a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Las Vegas was more than I ever expected. I was made to feel very special. Everyone was so friendly. I played a little poker growing up, but it’s only in the last few years when I started playing more regularly with friends and online. The Last Orders poker league is good fun and I’ve met a lot of great new people there.

Poker events make for a social occasion

There is no doubt going to be a lot of celebrating back in the Last Orders pub but you can probably put your money on the fact that there will be plenty of folk telling Bobby to get a round in! The big tournament itself took the shape of a huge 12 hour poker session against 100 top players in the Orleans Casino. The event itself had been building all throughout the year but in the end it was a bit of a rush for Bobby to get ready. This is down to the fact that Bobby has not been abroad since he was a child and he needed to get a new passport at short notice after winning the semi-final back in March! Bobby was one of the ten qualifiers from Sheffield for the Vegas 100 and that was just the beginning of the work as he managed to pull things together to enable the Vegas trip to go ahead.

Bobby is hoping to make inroads into playing poker professionally but he will always have the Redtooth Poker league to fall back on. This league is the largest UK live poker league and the MD of the company, Martin Green, released a statement after Bobby’s success, saying;

Since Vegas 100 was created, it has simply grown and grown. Bobby’s success is an example of how the tournament can offer a unique opportunity for everyone to enjoy.

Although the poker focus in the United Kingdom this weekend has naturally fallen on the International Stadiums Poker Tour at Wembley, there have been other places to play poker. The GUKPT series has been going from strength to strength this year and the latest event, held in Portsmouth, has done very well for itself. The numbers at Wembley may not quite be adding up with respect to meeting the price money but at Portsmouth, it turns out that there is a great level of demand with the number of players exceeding the initial expectations. This is great news and should help to spur the players on to higher levels of play.

Day 1a is traditionally a slow day at these event, which don’t really pick up until the weekend but there were 50 entrants taking part in the day’s poker activities. From this amount, 23 players managed to grab chips and the leader at the end of Day 1a was Morgan Sorfleet. Morgan had managed to turn his initial stack of 20,000 chips into just short of 100,000 which left him as the leader. He may not have too many cash victories to his name in live poker play but with this sort of form, that will surely change at some point soon.

Plenty of poker action to go

Other notable players at the higher end of the standings for Day 1a were Alvarez Sabugal, who had 70,300 chips and Nick Humphris who had 76,600. In second place at the end of Day 1a was Clive Macey who collected 82,050 chips.

Day 1b was even busier at the G-Casino in Portsmouth as 84 players came along to play for glory and the cash. The leader of this day’s poker was Chris Gordon who turned his opening stack of 20,000 chips into 101,775. This was enough to take the lead in the tournament up to this point and like Morgan Sorfleet, Gordon would have hopes and expectations of going far in this event.

Other notable players at the higher end of the standings for Day 1b were Trevor Davies, who had 89,000 chips and Paul Dunne, who had 94,400. Just edging Dunne out was Blair Hampton, who picked up 94,800 chips to take second place on Day 1b. Day 2 of the GUKPT Portsmouth event started with 55 players and was going all the way through until 9 players were left to create a final table.

Well, the football season is done and dusted in England and this means that the time has finally come for Wembley to focus on the poker. The big winner of the guaranteed million euros at the ISPT event in Wembley won’t be known until Wednesday but players are making their way to the famous stadium right now. This is going to be a huge thrill for so many poker players because it is not often that you get the chance to head to Wembley and take part in playing yourself.

The vast majority of press and focus for this event has fallen on the big poker event, which is only fair but there are going to be other poker games surrounding the Main Event. This is always good because some players will want to see the excitement but not pay the high buy-in fee that is the only way to now gain entry to the event. There are also going to be those players that get knocked out of the poker event and want to keep on playing but don’t want to spend the cash for a buy-in, if it is still on offer.

Plenty of poker games where you can sit and go

There is going to be a sit n go room set up by the ISPT, which is definitely going to be a big draw for poker players. It is said that the games will range from £100 to £10,000 which should ensure that there is a very broad mix of players getting involved. There is no need to buy in advance as players will be able to purchase their entry directly with cash at the time when they make their way to the table to play.

There are also going to be some other cash games around London in association with the ISPT event. If you can’t quite make it to Wembley but fancy playing at the Palm Beach Casino or the Mint Casino in London, you will have the chance to enjoy cash games which will be made available from 3pm every day of the festival. The Palm Beach Casino is located at 30 Berkeley Street in Mayfair in London while the Mint Casino, which is a Genting Casino, can be found at 45 Cromwell Road in South Kensington in the city.

Some of the limits on offer will be £5/£10, £10/£25, £25/£50 and above. An added touch is the fact that both of these venues will be running to and from Wembley and these casinos throughout the day so if you fancy maximising your casino options, you will get all the support and assistance that you need.