Marc Wright emerged victorious from the Grand Final of the 2016 edition of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT), taking home a massive prize of £132,380 after striking a heads-up deal with his last standing opponent. The event, which featured a buy-in of £2,125, gathered a players field of 276 entries.
However, only the top 26 players got paid for their participation, with a minimum cash portion of the guaranteed prize pool equalling £4,420.
After emerging as winner of the 2016 GUKPT Grand Final, the UK player, who is also known in online poker circles under the nickname “dean23price”, managed to boost his live tournament winnings to $444,253. On the other hand, he has won about $4 million in online poker tournaments since the beginning of his career. His biggest live cash winning before the first place in the Grand Final of this year’s GUKPT edition was his seventh position in the EPT Berlin Main Event in 2012, in which he managed to scoop a prize of €97,000.
With the 2016 GUKPT Grand Final gathering over 270 players, some of the most popular poker professionals such as Jake Cody, Kevin Allen, Matt Strom-Perrins, Ben Jones, etc., took part in the competition. All of the above-mentioned entrants finished within the money places.
As long as the final table is concerned, the Spanish poker player Lucas Blanco was the first player who got eliminated, followed by Nikola Minkov shortly after. At this stage, the game was pretty fast-paced and players were eliminated one by one, until it was took to a four-handed play which lasted for more than an hour. With the elimination of Naofel Smires, there were only three players left to compete for the winner’s title in the 2016 GUKPT Grand Final.
However, almost immediately after Smires had left the table, another player got eliminated, leaving Marc Wright and Will Davies as the last two players standing. The two of them made a decision of striking a deal, according to which Wright got a cash portion of £127,000 and Davies got £120,000. The remaining £10,000 and the tournament’s trophy were left for the eventual winner.
After almost an hour of heads-up battle, the two players agreed to split the £10,000 cash portion and play for the trophy only. It was Marc Wright who managed to beat his opponent’s hand and became the tournament’s champion.
With Marc Wright taking the first position in the competition, Will Davies remained as a runner-up, scooping a total of £125,380 after a heads-up deal with Wright. Tamer Kamel remained third, taking home a consolation prize of £63,480.
The fourth position was occupied by Naoufel Smires, followed by Bandar Alireza, who got £28,150 for his participation. Paul Scipioni got sixth, and Kiat Le took the seventh place. Nikola Minkov remained eighth, and Lucas Blanco occupied the ninth position in the ranking, getting a £11,040 cash portion of the guaranteed prize pool.
- Author
Harry Evans
