Sam Mitten-Laurence Wins Season 5’s UKIPT Nottingham Main Event
Sam Mitten-Laurence has played more than 20,000 tournaments online, but until the Season 5 edition of the UKIPT Nottingham Main Event, he had only played one live tournament. Now, after completing his second live event, Mitten-Laurence has notched a victory, taking down the aforementioned UKIPT Nottingham tournament and claiming its £182,000 first-place prize.
Day 3 began with 37 players, among them some of poker's better-known faces. Some of those players, namely Andrew "stato_1" Hulme (37th - £3,760), Morten Mortensen (30th - £4,330), Ireland's Dara Davey (21st - £6,070), Serigio Aido (16th - £8,070), and Ben Vinson (12th - £10,070) fell before the final table was reached.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sam Mitten-Laurence | £182,000 |
| 2 | Trevor Pearson | £110,000 |
| 3 | Richard Jones | £77,400 |
| 4 | Patrick Clarke | £58,100 |
| 5 | Krzysztof Jacyk | £44,700 |
| 6 | Kuljinder Sidhu | £32,000 |
| 7 | Sunil Pancholi | £24,200 |
| 8 | Luke Perrott | £17,320 |
First to fall was Luke Perrott, some 90 minutes after play at the final table began. Kuljinder Sidhu opened to 300,000 from his seat in the hijack position, Perrott three-bet all in for 1,300,000 from the cutoff seat, and 2014 Irish Open champion Patrick Clarke four-bet all in for 5,000,000 from the button. Sidhu had seen enough and folded, leaving the A♥K♠ of Clarke to go to battle with the dominated A♣J♣ of Perrott. By the river, the board read K♦7♣9♥10♠10♣ and Perrott was gone.
Twenty minutes later, Sunil Pancholi was sent to the rail. Pancholi pushed all in for 1,085,000 from under the gun with what turned out to be the Q♠10♠. Mitten-Laurence looked him up from the next seat with the J♥J♦. Pancholi connected with the 10♥8♦7♥ flop, picked up a gutshot on the 9♦ turn, but the K♠ river failed to alter the course of the hand and the final table was left with only six players.
Those six became five with the exit of the dangerous Sidhu and then Krzysztof Jacyk was next to bust. After that, Clarke hit the rail in fourth, and Richard Jones fell in third to set up the heads-up battle.
Mitten-Laurence went into the one-on-one battle with Trevor Pearson holding an 18,900,000-6,560,000 chip lead. A short battle went the way of the online star, with the final hand seeing Mitten-Laurence raise to 700,000 with the A♥K♥. Pearson made it 1,200,000 to go, and then called when Mitten-Laurence shoved. Pearson's A♠J♥ was in major trouble and never managed to come from behind as the five community cards fell A♣5♥2♦6♣K♦.
Next up for the UKIPT is a couple of months break before it jets off to Marbella in sunny Spain. The UKIPT Marbella festival runs from June 15-21 and as usual you can qualify for the Main Event at PokerStars. Perhaps you’ll follow in Mitten-Laurence’s footsteps and turn a £160 investment into a massive six-figure score!
*Lead image courtesy of Mickey May of the PokerStars Blog.
Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook today!
