Tour Manager’s Diary – Newcastle Final Day

Tuesday 20th May, 2008

Saturday turned out to be a long day. Joey Lovelady turned out to be the unfortunate player to just miss out on the final table. He had been pretty active during the bubble situation and was being tipped by many in the press room as a possible winner, but it was not to be for Joey as he ran A-3 into Fraser McIntyre’s pocket aces. After a few short hours of sleep, it was time for the final table to get underway. It featured only one player who had previously graced a GUKPT main event final table. That player was Ganesh Rao, who went on to win the trophy, overcoming Mancunian Ian Farrell after a heads up battle that lasted almost two hours. It is great to see a competitive finish and even though the last two had already done a deal for the remaining prize money, both were determined to win. The lead swung back and forth and either player could have won it.

Ganesh is a very worthy winner. He wore his heart on his sleeve throughout the tournament and whenever he was all in on the final table he could not bear to watch the cards coming down and instead buried his head on the table while the cards were dealt out. After the river card was dealt on the final hand Ganesh leapt from his seat and celebrated exuberantly with his fans on the rail. As the only player on the final who lives in Newcastle, it was perhaps fitting that a local had taken away top honours. It was a late finish to the tournament, ending as it did shortly before 2.am. We have had early finishes at the last three legs, but thankfully it did not go on as long as last year’s Newcastle final, which took until almost 5.am to reach a conclusion.

All the staff members at the Grosvenor casino in Newcastle have done an excellent job here, none less than head chef David Tate. The buffets were excellent all week and one day there were even whole baked freshwater trout on offer as well as lemon sole and mussels. I also have it on good authority that the sticky toffee pudding was out of this world. I got to the buffet too late on that day and there was no dessert left.

It’s been a great first 5 months of the tour, but now the GUKPT takes a summer vacation. The festivities will resume on July 21st when the online leg of the tour takes place. The festival features added prize money in every event, trophies for the winners and seats in the Champion of Champions tournament. The next live event is leg 6, which takes place at the G casino in Luton from August 2nd – 10th with the main event getting underway on the 7th. Super satellites are continuing online at Blue Square Poker throughout the summer season and qualifiers for the online festival have recently been added to the schedule. Until next time, be good and may your pocket pairs hit trips on every flop.

Jonathan Raab

Tour Manager
Friday 16th May, 2007

Past entries for Newcastle 2008

Newcastle 08 day 1 Please click here
Newcastle 08 day 2 Please click here