Dave Clark from Colchester has won leg 7 of the GUKPT at the G Casino in Luton, defeating a field of 314 players to take home the £97,300, an additional £10,000 provided by tour sponsor Blue Square and a seat in the £3,000 Grand Final at the end of the year. He defeated Warren Wooldridge after a short heads up battle at the end of a marathon final table that lasted over 10 hours. In the final hand Dave held J-9 against Warren’s Q-5, but the damage had already been done a few hands earlier when Dave’s pocket Kings beat Warren’s Q-8 on an 8 high flop.

Twelve players returned for the final day of the tournament, but only nine of them would make the final. The unlucky three who missed out on a final table appearance were Welshman John Marles, Glenn Altham and Nik Persaud. Nik was particularly unlucky to miss out, having gone from chip leader to out of the tournament very quickly after suffering two nasty beats. It was especially disappointing for Nik, as this was the third time on the tour that he has just missed out on a final table appearance.

The leader going into the final was Londoner and seasoned pro Alan Vinson, on almost 600,000 chips, with fellow Londoner Warren Wooldridge not far behind. The full chip counts going into the final were:

Shortstack Jonothon Butters doubled up early on when his A-J was too good for Alan Vinson’s pocket aces. He was fortunate to hit two jacks to take him up to over 200,000 chips. First to go was Ben Turnstill, who pushed with JT of diamonds only to run into Dave Clark’s pocket queens. Play then slowed and it was quite some time before Adam Stoneham became the 8th place finisher. He had become short stacked and with AK he reraised Alan Vinson’s opening bet of 60,000. Alan called, holding K-Q, which put Adam in pretty good shape, but the first card out was a queen, which signalled the end for the young London pro.

Local player Tony Ringe took seventh place and Ian Herbert, took sixth. The popular Welshman had gone into the final in 3rd place and had moved up into second, but he lost a lot of his chips in a big pot to Jan Magnus Brevik and was eliminated shortly after the dinner break.

Jan Magnus Brevik from Oslo was the first Scandinavian to make a GUKPT final and played with great spirit, making move after move at times when his opponents were not brave enough to take a stand against him. However, he made one big mistake in calling a Dave Clark preflop all-in with A-J. Dave, holding A-Q had pushed all-in three hands in a row and this time he had the goods. Dave won a massive 1.2 million chip pot and Jan, realising he had made a schoolboy error in calling such a big bet with a relatively weak hand, was inconsolable afterwards. This left Dave as the chip leader, but Warren Wooldridge was not far behind with Alan Vinson and Jonothon Butters on around half a million chips each.

Alan Vinson finished in fourth place after his K-Q failed to improve against Warren Wooldridge’s pocket nines. At this point Warren was in a commanding position with almost 60% of the chips. However he was not able to convert this into a quick win and with three players left it took several hours before we finally got heads up. After narrowly avoiding elimination several times, he was eventually taken out when his pocket jacks were busted by Dave’s K-Q.

Dave has been a regular on the tour and was delighted with his win. He is soon to get married so this victory has come at a most fortuitous moment for him. It hasn’t really sunk in for him yet, but when he wakes up tomorrow morning he will have over 100,000 thousand reasons to be pleased with himself.

Sponsors Blue Square give an additional £10,000 to the winner plus a seat in the GUKPT Grand Final!