UK & Ireland PokerNews Roundup: Grand Prix Champion Crowned
When the World Series of Poker (WSOP) kicks off in Las Vegas, the rest of the poker world usually goes on an unofficial hiatus until it finishes. With so many of the world's players heading to Las Vegas to compete for a coveted gold bracelet, it makes perfect business sense to have a slow few weeks while they're away.
Someone might've forgot to tell that to the United Kingdom and Ireland, though, because this week, despite the 2015 WSOP commencing, there has been new galore including players winning tournaments, companies hiring new senior managers, brand new tournaments being announced and more. So without further ado, let's get started rounding up the past seven days' action from our UK & Ireland PokerNews site.
One of the most exciting live tournaments in recent time concluded at the start of the week over at Dusk Till Dawn (DTD) in Nottingham. The partypoker Grand Prix Million only cost $120 to enter, but it featured a $1 million guaranteed prize pool. Sadly for DTD, but amazingly for the players involved, the guarantee wasn't hit and DTD added more than $270,000 to the prize pool. The main beneficiary of this was Antonius Samuel (pictured) who walked away with the tournament's $100,000 first-place prize.
In spite of the massive overlay, partypoker and DTD have agreed to a Grand Prix Million sequel in December, but before then there is a Deepstack series that features $725,000 in guaranteed prize pools, and the series kicks off this weekend.
While the Grand Prix Million was busy crowning its winner, Scotland's Ludovic Geilich was busy bossing people around in the $5,200 Pot-Limit Omaha Six-Max Triple-Stack Spring Championship Of Online Poker (SCOOP) event at PokerStars. Geilich narrowly missed out on a SCOOP watch and fell in second place, but not before negotiating a deal that locked up more than $186,000.
Keeping with online poker and the news that the MPN, formerly known as the Microgaming Network adding another skin to its online poker platform. Asian outfit 138.com is the latest name too join the MPN following Adjarabet and SBOBET earlier in 2015.
Still with the online world and the in-form Billy Chattaway climbed up to fifth place in the UK online poker rankings this week and is closing in on a career-high in the worldwide standings, while PokerStars finally launched is sports betting site for UK customers who are using the PokerStars 7 client.
Into the world of live poker now and Celtic Park, home to Celtic FC in Scotland, is the venue for the upcoming Unibet Open Glasgow festival that PokerNews is reporting live from.
Not long before the Unibet Open festivities, the 2015 Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Cardiff Main Event will wrap up. Day 1a is already in the books and you can find out which familiar face leads the way by clicking here.
Lastly, some business news for you to digest. bwinparty digital entertainment plc, a target for 888 Holdings, GVC Holdings, and Amaya Gaming, saw year-on-year revenues for Q1 fall by six percent with poker revenues dropping like a proverbial stone.
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