UK & Ireland PokerNews Round-Up: Online Festivals Announced
It's been a relatively quiet week in the United Kingdom and Ireland poker worlds as many players took a well-deserved rest after the PokerStars World Championship Of Online Poker (WCOOP). Many of them are resting in preparation for a busy end to 2015, but there was still a handful of newsworthy events written about on the UK & Ireland PokerNews site, some of which you can find below.
The week began with the crowning of champions. Colin Gillon was the first of this duo, winning the Genting Poker Series (GPS) Edinburgh Main Event for £25,270. Gillon topped a field of 275 in the £440 buy-in tournament, outlasting the likes of Andrew Teng, Dominik Nitsche, Robbie Bull, Paul McTaggart, and his heads-up opponent Niall Farrell.
Champion number two was Dan Stacey, who emerged victorious in the UKIPT Isle of Man Main Event. This was Stacey’s first major live tournament victory and the £24,170 he won is the largest score of his career to date. Stacey finished sixth in this very event in 2013, so he was understandably delighted to have gone this distance this time around.
Keeping with live poker for now, UK & Ireland PokerNews took a look at the live events taking place during October. By clicking this link you’ll see a plethora of live tournaments running in the UK and Ireland throughout the 10th month of the year. The question is, which of them are you buying into?
One of the events listing on that calendar is the Grand Prix Poker Tour that kicks off this weekend. Despite the low £70 buy-in, the Grand Prix Poker Tour at Dusk Till Dawn features a £250,000 guaranteed prize pool. That means the tournament needs 4,166 entries in order to avoid overlaying. It's a tough task, but if anyone can do it, it is Rob Yong and his excellent staff.
Switching to the online poker world now and the news of a new world record for PokerStars, where an almost unbelievable 253,698 players bought into the opening event of the Common Cents series. An Austrian player using the alias "DaDumon" finished at the top of the pile and turned his $0.01 investment into $10,000 for what is one of the best returns on an investment enjoyed by any poker player in the history of the game.
Two other online festivals are in the pipeline in the coming week. One, the Sky Poker UK Online Poker Championships (UKOPS), was announced and it makes interesting reading. Now in its 14th edition, this latest UKOPS runs from Nov. 1-15 and boasts 126 tournaments with combined guaranteed prize pools of £500,000. If you like six-handed poker tournaments, then you need to head to Sky Poker because all of its tournaments are played in the short-handed format.
A massive $5 million in guarantees series begins on Monday, Oct. 12, on PokerStars. The Knockout Week features 35 knockout tournaments over a seven-day period and is full to the brim with extra value, including the chance to win $5,000 instantly just for eliminating players in the Knockout Week events.
Rounding things up for this week’s UK & Ireland PokerNews Round-Up are the online and Global Poker Index (GPI) rankings. In the online world, Rory "rbdowntown" Brown entered the Irish top 20 following his massive $273,000 score during the WCOOP, while the UK's Rupert Elder climbed to a career-high of 55th in the world. Check out the top 20 players from the region via this link.
Lastly, the UK and Ireland GPI rankings, where Stephen Chidwick remains on top in the UK and Marc MacDonnell in pole position in Ireland. Chidwick is the only player from both rankings to be in the overall top five of the GPI, while all of the top 20 UK players are in the GPI300. Again, a click of this link will allow you to see who the top 20 players from each leaderboard are.
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