Boulton Leads the Final 16 in London; Saout and Spragg in Contention

Out of a field of 645 entries, only 16 players from seven different countries are still in contention to become the 2022 PokerStars UKIPT London £1,100 Main Event champion. The lion's share of the £619,200 prize pool will be up for grabs when a winner is crowned on Sunday, April 10, 2022.

Best positioned to win the first UKIPT Main Event in nearly five and a half years is the UK's Joshua Boulton with a stack of 3,350,000. He is well ahead of the next contender after pulling away of the pack once the final two tables were set. Julien Sitbon sits in second place with 2,385,000 in chips followed by fellow Frenchman Antoine Saout with 2,185,000.

London resident Alexios Zervos also resides in the overnight top five with 1,580,000 and Dongze Hao follows right behind with 1,535,000. According to the table chat, Hao mentioned that he has been playing cash games for many years but this event is just his second tournament ever.

Most of the hopefuls are hailing from the UK and that also includes the former EPT Main Event finalist Kully Sidhu and PokerStars ambassador Ben Spragg. They navigated through the final stages with shorter stacks and finished with 840,000 and 540,000 respectively.

Seat Assignments for the Final Day

Seat	Table 1	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	Rickie Vedhara	United Kingdom	1,315,000	44
2	Alexios Zervos	Greece	1,580,000	53
3	Liudas Didenka	Lithuania	345,000	12
4	Ben Spragg	United Kingdom	540,000	18
5	Lukas Dimsa	Lithuania	890,000	30
6	Lorenc Boci	Albania	810,000	27
7	Julien Sitbon	France	2,385,000	80
8	Antoine Saout	France	2,185,000	73

Seat	Table 2	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	James Rann	United Kingdom	905,000	30
2	Joshua Boulton	United Kingdom	3,350,000	112
3	Kully Sidhu	United Kingdom	840,000	28
4	Dongze Hao	China	1,535,000	51
5	Ben Slack	United Kingdom	970,000	32
6	Sorin Pruteanu	Romania	735,000	25
7	Michael Ramiro	United Kingdom	320,000	11
8	Robert Boon	United Kingdom	590,000	20

The penultimate tournament day started with 128 hopefuls all aiming to secure a min-cash of at least £1,684 for their efforts. It didn't take long to get to the money as the bubble was reached within the first two levels. Among those to bow out until then were the £2,200 High Roller champion Jack O'Neill, Sylvain Loosli, Kevin Allen, David Docherty, and Antoine Labat.

For team PokerStars, the bad fortune struck several times as four of the six red spade representatives came up short of the payouts. Parker Talbot ran bad early on and bowed out against Alexios Zervos when his dominated ace was only good on the flop. Steve Enriquez followed shortly after and PokerStars Senior Twitch & Ambassadors Associate failed to get there when nursing a short stack. Two away from the money, Ido Alon ran with queens into the kings of Alexander Zeligman.

On the money bubble itself, local regular Antonis "Tony" Poulengeris stuck his last three and a half blinds in from the cutoff with ten-nine suited and ended up second-best to the queen-nine of initial raiser Antoine Saout. This set the stage for a frantic period in which the all-in showdowns kept coming every other minute.

Saout established himself near the top of the leaderboard after knocking out Atanas Pavlov and Sam Grafton was then knocked out within two hands against Ahamed Mohamed.

Only 37 players remained in contention on the dinner break after six hours of play. Just before that, the fireworks at the tables sent Nikolay Ponomarev to the rail and the action thereafter continued in similar fashion.

Notable casualties in the final stages of the night included Yucel "Mad Turk" Eminoglu, Ori Hasson, and Henrik Hecklen. Zeligman then came up short of the final two tables when his slow-played aces were flushed away by Joshua Boulton's king-nine suited and he bowed out in the next hand. No more elimination took place and the sweet sixteen then wrapped up for the night.

The action on the final day will continue at noon local time with blinds of 15,000-30,000 and a big blind ante of 30,000. Stay tuned right here on PokerNews to find out who will lift the title at the iconic Hippodrome Casino in the heart of London.

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