Press release
Priyan Deux Mel Wins Bolton GUKPT
Priyan de Mel has won Leg 1 of the 2010 Grosvenor UK Poker Tour, becoming the first player to win back-to- back £1,000 main events. The Londoner defeated a field of 146 players at the G Casino in Bolton to take home £44,600 and the first of new tour sponsor gcasino.com's stylish trophies. In November 2009 he also won Blackpool's main event and is now only the third player to have secured two main event titles. His heads up opponent was Andrew Purser from Margate, who was playing in his first main event final table. With four players left de Mel had a commanding chip lead, but after Purser eliminated Harrogate's Jamie Sykes in third place, the gap had been narrowed and just 50,000 chips out of 2.2m separated the two players. De Mel had the best of the early exchanges and once again rebuilt his chip lead. The final hand occurred after over an hour of heads up when Purser moved all in with K-T and was called by de Mel, who had A-4. The board of 8-Q-4-9-9 settled the encounter in favour of the 36-year-old property developer.
De Mel was elated to have captured his second GUKPT title, but commented in the post tournament interview that he was thirsty for further success
“I'm really happy to have done back-to-back titles,but three titles is a good target to aim for.”
He went on to say
“Most of my friends are in Australia now so I didn't have many people here supporting me, but I guess them being away made it easier for me to win this one.”
He also praised Andrew Purser's play, saying
“He was short stacked and played a brilliant game to get heads up.”
The final table included another previous main event winner in Jeff Kimber, who exited in 8th place. 4th placed Terry Owens from Liverpool was competing in his second main event final table and 9th placed Aaron Barry from Harrogate had made two previous finals. Cornwall's Marc Wright (5th), Manchester's Justin Devonport (6th) and the Preston pair of Philip Booth (7th) and Mark Robinson (10th) completed the ten-handed final table.
In previous years the final table of GUKPT events had been nine-handed, but this year it has been changed to ten. Winner Priyan de Mel was in seat ten and remarked afterwards that ten is his lucky number and also the date he was born on.
The Result
Place Player Prize
1st Priyan de Mel £44,600
2nd Andrew Purser £30,300
3rd James Sykes £19,000
4th Terry Owens £11,700
5th Marc Wright £9,100
6th Justin Devonport £6,900
7th Philip Booth £5,500
8th Jeff Kimber £4,000
9th Aaron Barry £2,900
10th Mark Robinson £2,200
The next event on the GUKPT calendar takes place at 8pm on Monday 25th January online on bluesqpoker.com. It is a £100 NL Hold'em tournament and is the first of the GUKPT's Online 10% Series. Online events will take place throughout 2010 on the day after each of the live festivals concludes and will be for 10% of the buy-in of the main event that has just finished. As per all live GUKPT tournaments, the winners of these online tournaments will earn a seat into December's £150,000 Champion of Champions tournament.
The next live GUKPT events will be the inaugural GUKPT Club Championships tournaments. Every Grosvenor & G Casino with a poker room will host one of these £200 NL Hold'em freezeouts in 2010 and the first batch of these will take place on February 13th at the G Casinos in Blackpool, Coventry and Thanet; and at the Grosvenor Casinos in Leeds and Swansea. All start at 2.00pm and players will get 10,000 starting chips each. Please note that there have been some changes to the schedule for the Club Championships since the original schedule was published.
The main tour resumes on February 20th, when Leg 2 begins at the Grosvenor Casino in Walsall. The main event takes place from the 25th - 28th February, with two starting days on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th.
Further details of the schedule can be found on the tour's website at
www.gukpt.comOnline super satellites take place four times a week on
www.bluesqpoker.com and on the soon-to-be-launched
www.gcasino.com poker room.
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