Christopher Kyriacou Kicks the 888Live London Festival Off in Style
The popular 888Live festival is currently at Aspers Casino in London for 12 days of intense poker action, during which time at least £650,000 is guaranteed to be won.
Kicking off the London festival was the £220 888Live London Festival Opening Event, which featured a £120,000 guaranteed prize pool. Over the course of four starting flights, 521 unique players made 250 rebuys between them to take the total entries to 771 and to create a guarantee busting pot containing £142,758.
Of that bumper crowd, 129 players progressed to the second and final day and they were joined by five others who took advantage of being able to buy in on Day 2. Only 81 of those returnees received prize money for their efforts, with Chris Davis being the unfortunate soul to burst the money bubble, getting his stack into the middle with 7♥7♣ against J♣10♣ on a J♦7♠J♥ flop only to lose to a better full house when the 10♦ appeared on the river; Davis bust on the next hand after being reduced to a less than a small blind’s worth of chips.
Each of the 81 players who were in the money had locked up £400 and the prize money kept rising with every few eliminations. By the time the final table was reached, the least anyone could win was £2,293.
Final Table Action
| Seat | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ka Him Li | 2,030,000 |
| 2 | Phi Bang Vo | 2,235,000 |
| 3 | Tom Hughes | 3,115,000 |
| 4 | Christopher Kyriacou | 2,285,000 |
| 5 | Vincent Anderson | 3,205,000 |
| 6 | Gabriel-Antomio Gusetoiu | 1,395,000 |
| 7 | Javier Dopazo | 2,655,000 |
| 8 | Terry Simpson | 4,713,000 |
| 9 | [Removed:77] | 1,420,000 |
With blinds at 50,000/100,000/15,000a at the start of the final table, some of the players were quite short in terms of big blinds, but Christopher Kyriacou doubled through Vincent Anderson with ace-king versus ace-jack and then sent Phi Bang Vo to the rail when his pair of black tens held against Vo’s suited ace-queen to propel himself to almost 40 big blinds.
Eighth place went to Javier Dopazo who lost a coinflip with pocket jacks against the ace-king of Anderson courtesy of a king on the flop, then a shove from the small blind by [Removed:77] with king-four was called by Ka Him Li in the big blind with ace-king and the latter flopped trips to reduce the player count by one.
Gabriel-Antomio Gusetois ran his ace-queen into the pair of queens in the hand of Tom Hughes to bust in sixth place, before the dreadlocked Anderson lost back-to-back hands to be eliminated in fifth place, his final hand seeing his eight-six lose out to the pair of queens belonging to Hughes.
Hughes then moved all in for almost 11 big blinds from the cutoff with a suited ace-jack and was called by Kyriacou on the button who had been dealt a pair of tens. The tens held as the board double-paired with nines and sevens to leave only three players in contention for the title.
The final three players then took it upon themselves to pause the tournament clock and strike a deal for the remainder of the prize pool. As they didn’t leave any additional funds for the eventual champion, the tournament ended upon the conclusion of the deal, which paid out as shown in the table below.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christopher Kyriacou | £20,000* |
| 2 | Ka Him Li | £17,900* |
| 3 | Terry Simpson | £17,675* |
| 4 | Tom Hughes | £8,430 |
| 5 | Vincent Anderson | £6,210 |
| 6 | Gabriel-Antomio Gusetoiu | £4,950 |
| 7 | [Removed:77] | £4,050 |
| 8 | Javier Dopazo | £3,150 |
| 9 | Phi Bang Vo | £2,293 |
*reflects a three-handed deal
Ali Sakallioglu Wins 888Live London Turbo Deepstack
Another event on the schedule has its champion after Ali Sakallioglu topped a field of 108 entrants in the £80 Turbo Deepstack, which included 17 re-entries. Like the Opening Event, the Turbo Deepstack ended in a three-handed deal, although the tournament didn’t take two days to finish; it only took nine hours.
Ali Sakallioglu, Jan Ronningen and Yilfer Shevket each collected £1,800 as part of the deal, and then the trio played on for the trophy. Sakallioglu sent Shevket to the rail in third place when his ace-nine paired its nine on the turn to beat the dominating ace-ten, then was crowned champion when his king-seven of clubs improved to a flush to beat the queen-eight of Ronningen who had paired his queen on the flop.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ali Sakallioglu | £1,800* |
| 2 | Jan Ronningen | £1,800* |
| 3 | Yilfer Shevket | £1,800* |
| 4 | Lee Beetles | £830 |
| 5 | Eugan Marcu | £625 |
| 6 | Ivan Milev | £500 |
| 7 | Attila Nyitrai | £415 |
| 8 | Olly Durham | £330 |
| 9 | George Achillea | £250 |
*reflects a three-handed deal
Follow the action from the 888Live London Festival’s biggest events via the PokerNews Live Reporting pages.
