The Midland Masters at the Grosvenor Casino Walsall has been the big event since the last newsletter as it contained both the Quarter Million and the Grand Prix Final.
The Grand Prix Final kicked things off and with 27 nationwide heats being held already this generated a prize pool of £193,600.142 players contested the final and this proved to be a major success as it kept the numbers who contested the remaining tournaments at a high level for the week. Well done to Grosvenor for planning things this way.
Although there were no deals allowed at the final table the final 2 players Willie Tann and G. Davidson did make a deal away from the table taking home £39,000 each. G Davidson however went down as the official winner. His prize was further added to as the Casino gave him a holiday for 2 to Las Vegas with £1,000 spending money.
So the week started with a big event and also ended with one in the form of the £2,500 entry Quarter Million. This was not very well attended compared to last year as only 61 participated producing a prize pool of £152,500 which was roughly the same as first prize the year before. However the winner Iqbal Butt was not complaining as he took a first prize of £49,560 in a deal with Charalambos Xanthos who got the same for second.
Lucy Rokach
One player who always features in this newsletter is Lucy Rokach and she won another £20,800 by taking the £500 No Limit Hold’em. Lucy was a former school teacher and it would be great if she would give some lessons in Pokerschool Online. Her results this year have been truly amazing.
The £250 Pot Limit Hold’em went to Oz Mustanoglu £13,620, the £200 Pot Limit Omaha was won by M. Naserisfahny £15,610 and finally the £100 Pot Limit Holdem was won by Man Ip £11,140.
The final events of 2002 include the Christmas Cracker Festival at Brighton, the Poker Festival at Napoleons Sheffield and the Christmas Cracker at the Grosvenor Casino Luton and you can keep up to date with all the results on the website.
Finally don’t forget to enter the World Poker Open Warm Up on our ligaz11 software if you want a chance to enter the main $10,000 event in Tunica, January 2003. It could be you walking away with a first prize of over half a million dollars.
Poker Down Under
Crown’s special weekend of poker has just concluded with two more 10 K seats won by local players, David Hatzis & David Gorr (it must be the name). Other entries were won over the weekend and several deposits were made to reserve seats in the Main Event at Crown in January.
The highlight of the tournament weekend for me was seeing Michael Baisman win an amazing 16 out of 26 terminator buttons as well as finishing in 1st place of Saturday’s event. While Michael’s play was unorthodox to many of the regular tournament players, he certainly kept them guessing and showed that being aggressive pays off in this kind of tournament.
Packages to The New Zealand Championships were won by Lou, Karim and Rainer, three of Crown’s regular live game players. I am sure that these players will enjoy mixing it with the Kiwi’s in March, as will many of the Aussie players planning to make the trip across the Tasman. This week of Poker has been enjoyed by staff from Crown for the past three years and will include a Casino Employee event next year for the first time.
As well as the weekend of poker at Crown another event was underway in Adelaide. The Inaugural South Australian Poker Association Major Tournament weekend. If you think the title was long, the Draw event attracted 22 players and went for around 11 hours. Many of Australia’s best Draw players were there to see Bob Renshaw emerge as the eventual winner. Crown’s Poker Operations Manager, John Parker, kindly donated 4 nights at the luxurious Crown Towers to South Australian players visiting Crown for the Australasian Championship. This was greatly appreciated by the players and ensured that a great weekend was had by all.
