Poker in the News — Weekly Round-up for November 30, 2018

By Brian Cullingworth, Last updated Nov 30, 2018

U.K. Poker Series Goes Live Soon

Grosvenor Casinos 2019 poker calendar published

Over the weekend the UK’s Grosvenor Casinos unveiled details of the 2019 poker calendar, promised another year of poker tours and events with some new additions, including more online day ones, side events (including a GUKPT High Roller), a national league and the all-new Deepstack tour!

GUKPT

Grosvenor Casinos U.K Poker Tour (GUKPT), the company’s premier flagship tour, returns to 2019 for its 13th season. The 2019 GUKPT consists of 9 legs each hosting a Main Event with buy-ins ranging from £500+60 to £2,500+150 and guarantees of between £100,000 and £500,000. The prestigious GUKPT continuously draws in the biggest names in poker as well as many newcomers, plenty of whom take advantage of the extensive satellite offering at the host Grosvenor Casino or online on Grosvenorpoker.com.

Due to customer demand, the ever popular GUKPT Mini Main welcomes an Online Day 1 taking place on Grosvenorpoker.com on the Monday evening. In addition the 2019 GUKPT Grand Final guarantee will be a £2,500+150 event with the guarantee boosted to £500,000. The Grand Final festival with also feature a new High Roller event.

25/25

2019 also welcomes back the popular 25/25 competition The £25,000 guaranteed 25/25 reaches destinations across the U.K, bringing structured tournaments for an affordable price tag of £200+25. In 2019 there will be an online day 1 for all 25/25 Main Events and a new 25/25 Side Event taking place on the Sunday of each leg.

Seasonal Specials

The Easter Beast, Summer Sizzler and Christmas Cracker will be back in 2019. Each of the three Seasonal Specials consist of seven £20,000 tournaments with a £100+15 buy-in taking place across seven U.K. regions. Each of the seven regional tournaments hosts various day 1s before combining day 2 players to battle it out for the title. The Seasonal Specials are a particularly fun and sociable way to play poker, all whilst taking part in a serious tournament with a great structure.

UKSPC

Grosvenor Casinos U.K. Student Poker Championship (UKSPC) will be returning to Grosvenor Casino Coventry on Tuesday 23rd April 2019 for a week-long festival of poker. The UKSPC is the largest live student poker tournament.

Goliath

The record breaking Goliath returns to Grosvenor Casino Coventry in the Ricoh Arena on Saturday 27th July 2019. Every year this poker phenomenon has broken its own record to retain the title for the largest live poker tournament outside of the U.S.A. Last year the Goliath Main Event 7,584 entries, creating an incredible £758,400 prizepool.

In 2019 the Goliath Main Event has a first prize guaranteed at £100,000 an extraordinary amount to play for from a buy-in of just £100+25. The 2019 Goliath also sees the culmination of a year long poker journey for David Haye. The former world heavyweight champion will be competing in the Main Event after undergoing intensive poker training from the Grosvenor Casinos poker pros.

New to 2019 – Deepstack

Deepstack is the latest tour to join the Grosvenor line up. These events will all feature a £130+20 buy-in, £12,000 guaranteed prize pool, and a deep structure allowing for plenty of action. The Deepstack will reach numerous destinations each weekend and with outstanding numbers in 2018s GUKPT Mini Mains and 25/25s behind it, Grosvenor predicts another success.

New to 2019 – National League

In 2019 Grosvenor Casinos is running an all new national league which will feature ‘Diamond’ and ‘Platinum’ GUKPT Packages for 2020. The national league will be based on a points system which will see players earn points in Grosvenor Casinos’ poker tournaments with a £100 buy-in or more and which feature more than one Day 1 flight. More details on this exciting new addition will be released soon.

Grosvenorpoker.com

Grosvenor Casinos online site, Grosvenorpoker.com, ensures all customers can qualify for the above events through satellites running around the clock.

Unibet Publishes More Detail On Hexapro Poker Tourneys

Jackpot Sit’n Go tournaments has a prize pool randomly determined before the start

Starting early next month Unibet will be offering action in its new HexaPro jackpot sit ‘n go tournaments, which the company describes as three-handed, winner-takes-all sit ‘n go games with buy-ins ranging from 1 to 100 and a hyper-turbo blind structure.

The prize pool in these events is randomly determined before the tournament starts, but can be as large as 1,000 x the buy-in. Where the prize pool multiplier is 25x or above. The first-place takes 80 percent of the prize pool, the runner-up 12 percent, and the third-place 8 percent.

Unibet claims that its pay-out structure ensures that 43 percent of all games will have a prize pool at least 3x the buy-in, and the 10x multiplier occurs more frequently than that on competitor websites.

David Lappin, a Unibet ambassador set to play in the first HexaPro on December 3, predicted Sunday:

“This will be a fast-paced, fun way to enjoy the thrills of Texas HoldEm and, as you never know what the multiplier is going to be, theres a lot of added excitement thrown in. With multipliers ranging up to 1,000 times the buy-in, I know this is going to prove a very popular format.”

Ipoker Network Launches French-Spanish Shared Player Pool Action

Fourth major network joins th shared plyer pool project

In Europe the shared online poker market has received a boost with the announcement that the iPoker Network has launched French-Spanish shared tables, becoming the fourth major operator to do so.

The network received the approval of the French regulator ARJEL back in March this year, and more recently was given the green light by Spanish regulator DGOJ.

iPoker boasts strong operators in both the French and Spanish markets including Kindred Group’s Unibet.FR, BetClic, Bet365, Betfair, Casino Barcelona, and Sportium.

Other networks on the shared liquidity project include PokerStars, Partypoker and Winamax. PokerStars remains the only operator to have added Portugal to its shared pool thus far.

After initially agreeing to join the European shared player pool project with France, Spain and Portugal, the Italian regulator has made no concrete moves to do so and, given the new anti-gambling political regime in power in that country, the possibility appears increasingly remote that it will do so.

Moldavian Poker Pro Wins W.P.T. Rock ‘N Roll Open

$504,820 pay day for Pavel Plesuv

Pavel Plesuv (30), a poker pro from Moldova now resident in the Czech Republic, continued to enjoy a run of successful action at the $3,500 buy-in World Poker Tour Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open this week, besting a field of 898 to claim the main prize of $504, 820.

The big win brings Plesuv’s career earnings to over $4 million, over half of that earned this year with the biggest pay day a $924,841 runner up prize in February’s Partypoker Millions Germany, which he lost to Viktor Blom.

When US pro Jeremy Joseph headed for the exit and a third placing prize of $240,945, Plesuv faced US pro Jim Gilbert in the heads up. The Moldavian held a 6 to 1 chip lead but it took 69 hands before he was able to put the skilled American away for a runner up prize of 326,565.

Other final table cashes included:

Marius Gierse $179,710
Chris Kennedy $135,505
Ravi Raghavan $103,310

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