Launched in 2007, the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour brings the excitement of the big game experience to a casino near you. Sponsored by Blue Square Poker and taking place in nine Grosvenor or G casinos throughout the UK, the tour is a series of £1,000 No Limit Texas Hold’em tournaments, capped off with a £3,000 grand final at the end of the year. Prize money for the eleven main events in the tour’s first year topped £3.5m.

Channel 4 coverage of every leg of the tour’s inaugural year has 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 it is set to become even more competitive with new events being added to the schedule and every side event also carrying full tour status and ranking points towards the GUKPT Leaderboard. Sponsor Blue Square Poker is adding £200,000 to the second year of the tour and a new Champion of Champions tournament has been created where the best of the best will fight it out for top honours and a £75,000 prize pool.

With up to 400 players, each of the slow structured £1,000 main events takes place over four days, after a week of warm up tournaments. While most players simply pull up a grand to play, many qualify for much less cash via a variety of regular online and offline satellite tournaments.

For years Grosvenor casinos have been the major provider of poker festivals in the UK. The GUKPT cements the group’s status as the home of British poker. Blue Square is the UK’s oldest online bookmaker, having opened for business in 1998. Qualify online at the company’s poker site, bluesqpoker.com. See you on the final table!