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Poker News Round-up: Week #14The focus is very much on the British poker scene this week with news of a new tour, an update on the fledgling London Poker Circuit tour, and firstly some results from the country’s longest running and most prestigious tour – the GUKPT.  GUKPT London winner Martin Silke The increased buy this year of £1500 for the London leg made little difference to the attendance figures and the 398 runners made for a big prize pool of £597,000. As might be expected many of the UK’s top players were still present as the paid places were reached including the always consistent Dave Colclough, who has already posted five live cashes for the year so far. Those who made it furthest of all though were perhaps not quite as well known but thoroughly deserving of their money to have made it through a large and talented field. Shortly after midnight on Sunday night, Luke Trotman was receiving congratulations from the crowd after rivering a flush whilst heads up against Martin Silke. In all the excitement a number of people failed to spot that the river card had also made a full house for Silke though, and instead of collecting the trophy Trotman had to sit back down and play on as the short stack. Soon after Silke had the rest of the chips sitting in front of him after having Trotman out kicked when they both flopped top pair, and it was the man from Ireland who collected the £172,850 for first place. He will also feature in the champion of champions tournament back at the Vic later on in the year. Earlier on in the year it seemed as though the GUKPT would be the only significant domestic tour for 2009 after Gala announced that there would be no season three of the GCBPT. Now it seems that many of those tournaments that we expected to see this year will be taking place after all, but repackaged as the British Masters Poker Tour sponsored by Coral. There will be six mini festivals at Gala casinos featuring £100, £200 and £500 tournaments at each, culminating in a grand final in Bristol. The whole tour is appears to be the same as the GCBPT in all but name, so perhaps it was just a re-branding exercise to replace Gala with Coral as the name associated with the tour. Whatever the reason it’s good to see the return of a popular tour which will commence at Edinburgh’s Gala Maybury casino in mid-May. Shortly after the GCBPT was cancelled it did seem for a moment that another tour was about to step in to offer some mid stakes tournaments with a few high roller events thrown in but so far things haven’t gone too well for the London Poker Circuit. The organisation has left something to be desired as the first two events on the new tour clashed not only with one another but also ran whilst GUKPT London was in progress. Unsurprisingly the new boys in town failed to draw a huge number of players away from the more established games just down the road and the inaugural £1,000 main event drew a field of just 18 players. After some last minute re-arrangements what had been planned as an event requiring two separate starting days turned into a two table sit and go which was won by GUKPT Luton champion Sam Trickett. Over at the Westbury hotel in Mayfair, the plan was to host two high roller events with £5,000 and £10,000 buy ins but these tournaments never even got started and the event was cancelled. All credit to the organisers for trying to get something like this up and running but having a £10,000 event every month seems a little optimistic and the scheduling it has to be said has been pretty poor so far. Next up on their itinerary is another high roller event on 14th/15th April – just as many pros will be making their way back from the Irish Open in Dublin. In the past few years poker camps such as WSOP Academy have been growing in popularity but we haven’t yet seen one in the UK. That is now set to change thanks to Neil Channing’s new venture Black Belt Poker which will be holding a two day session at the Loose Cannon club in May. Channing will be providing instruction along with Phil Laak, Nik Persaud and Nick Wealthall and at the end of the weekend’s instruction students will play for a $5,000 WSOP package. The event is priced at £700 which includes accommodation although unlike its Las Vegas counterparts there are bound to be enquiries from Londoners who would rather hop on the tube home at the end of the day. Now March is ended a winner has been found in the Bluff online poker challenge which set many top internet players the task of building as big a bankroll as possible during the month starting with just $200. Despite a very strong line up there was one player in the challenge who utterly crushed the rest of the field, forcing many to bust their roll taking risks to try and catch him. Of the 25 players who took part only 8 recorded any profit at the end of the month, largely due to the fact that Brian Hawkins steamed off into a big lead early on and finished over $25,000 in profit. The UK’s Chris Moorman took part in the challenge and after a decent start seemed to lose the will to carry on, logging only 65 games during the month. In contrast Hawkins got through 698 single or multi table tournaments, and for his efforts the 20 year old will be rewarded by featuring on the cover of Bluff Magazine. Next week is set to be a little quiet for live tournaments but the online scene is, as always, full of activity. Pokerstars’ Spring Championship Of Online Poker is now underway and Full Tilt has another FTOPS lined up with satellites currently running so get those mouse fingers clicking.
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