Launched in 2007, the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour brings the excitement of the big game experience to a casino near you. The tour is a series of poker festivals that take place throughout the UK and online. Each festival features several warm up events with buy ins ranging from £100 - £500 and a £1,000 main event. At the end of the year the stakes are raised to £2,500 for the tour's Grand Final, which take place at the Grosvenor Victoria casino in London. The tour is run by Grosvenor/G casinos, whose dedicated team of professional tournament directors, supervisors and dealers ensure the smooth running of each and every event. For the first three years the tour was run in conjunction with Blue Square Poker, but gcasino.com took over the online partnership in January 2010.
Prize money for the eleven main events in the tour's first year topped £3.5m and it was recorded and televised for Channel 4. Indeed, television coverage of every leg of the tour's inaugural year helped create a whole new host of British poker superstars, taking live poker in the UK to an unprecedented new level. Professional players, keen amateurs and Internet qualifiers were amongst those who sat down each month to battle it out for a place in history and life changing amounts of money.
In 2008 the tour was not televised, but if anything, it was even more competitive than in 2007 as new events were added to the schedule and the rankings system was extended to include all side events as well as main event. 2008 concluded with the inaugural Champion of Champions tournament, a £75,000 event open only to players who had won events during the 2008 tour.
In 2009 a the Summer Series was added to the tour's repertoire, consisting of several mini-festivals during the summer months, each with £500 main events. The Champion of Champions tournament also returned in 2009 with an increased prize pool of £100,000. It was won by Dundee based Haitao Wu. The prize money for the GUKPT rankings was increased to £50,000 and it was Luton main event winner Richard Gryko who triumphed, outscoring Ireland's Martin Silke by just half a point to take the £20,000 first prize and the title of GUKPT Player of the Year. Total prize money in 2009 topped £5.5m.
Prize money in 2010 also exceeded £5.5m with an increased prize pool £150,000 Champion of Champions won by Luke Fields and the £50,000 GUKPT Rankings Leaderboard won by David Johnson.
In 2011 the Tour expanded into online territory with the Online 10% series rounding off each of the tour's Main Legs, while the Champion of Champions format changed to individual freerolls - of at least £10,000 - for winners of any festival event. Steve Vigor earned the prestigious Player of the Year title after finishing the year at the top of the GUKPT Rankings - earning himself £26,000 for his consistent efforts on the tour throughout the year.