The Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) is currently in Leeds for the eighth leg of the 2023 season, and while the Main Event was edging closer to crowning its champion, Hamza Nasir was busy taking down the £1,350 High Roller for a £47,790 payday.
According to The Hendon Mob Database, this impressive victory is Nasir’s fifth cash of 2023 career and the first time he has emerged victoriously from the battle.; what a way to break his duck. The 2023 GUKPT Leeds High Roller drew in 121 entrants, who created a £156,820 prize pool. Anyone finishing in the top 13 places banked at least £3,000 for their efforts, with the top five finishers locking in a five-figure haul.
Konstantinos Patsourakis was the first entrant to bust inside the money places. The 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event finalist Dean Hutchison finished in 12th, with the eliminations of Alan Carr and Lin Chen leaving only nine players in contention for the title of champion.
2023 GUKPT Leeds High Roller Final Table Results
| Rank | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hamza Nasir | £47,790 |
| 2 | Paul Patouilliart | £31,050 |
| 3 | Stuart Rutter | £20,230 |
| 4 | Ian Fieldhouse | £13,800 |
| 5 | Michael Kane | £10,035 |
| 6 | Aleks Golubevs | £7,060 |
| 7 | Brandon Sheils | £5,330 |
| 8 | Robbie Bull | £4,550 |
| 9 | Matt Eardley | £4,075 |
Matt Eardley, winner of the 2019 GUKPT Blackpool Main Event, fell in ninth place when his pocket kings ran into the superior kings in the hands of Stuart Rutter.
Scotland’s Robbie Bull bowed out in eighth. Bull lost most of his stack when his pocket nines couldn’t hold against the ace-king of Brandon Sheils, and he never recovered. GUKPT High Roller events have been kind to Bull recently. He finished third in a £3,000 event in Luton for £11,090, and finished second in a £2,000 event, also in Luton, for £23,040.
Seventh place went to Sheils, who crashed out at the hands of Nasir. Six of Sheils’ last nine cashes have also been final table appearances, with two of those cashes being outright victories.
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The final four-figure prize, £7,060, went to the grinder that is Aleks Golubevs, who made a move for his last 12 big blinds with ace-seven, and couldn’t get there against Nasir’s pocket tens.
Another Scotsman, Michael Kane, was only meant to blow the bloody doors off but he fell in fifth. Kane was all in for five big blinds with pocket deuces, and found himself flipping against France’s Paul Patouilliart‘s ace-jack. The Frenchman flopped Broadway, while the river gifted Kane a set to rub some salt into his wounds.
Fourth place came with a £13,080 payout, resulting in a new career-best haul for Ian Fieldhouse, besting the £4,200 he won for a fifth-place finish in a £60 Grand Prix event at Dusk Till Dawn in March 2013.
The GUKPT Leeds High Roller progressed to the heads-up stage when Stuart Rutter busted in third for £20,230. Rutter got the job done in the Luton Main Event in September, a result that earned him £62,368, but his luck was not in this time around.
Heads-up play last less than five minutes, ending with Nasir helping himself to Patouilliart’s short stack. Patouilliart, who hails from Marseille, France, scooped £31,050 for his bridesmaid finish, surpassing the $34,845 he banked for a deep run in the 2019 WSOP Main Event.
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GUKPT Leeds Main Event Reaches Day 2
Some 346 players bought into the £1,000 GUKPT Leeds Main Event but only 97 of those punched their Day 2 tickets. Tuan Le (186,000) is the man to catch going into the penultimate day’s play. Le has plenty of work ahead of him because there are some supremely talented players hot on his heels.
Ravi Sheth (175,500), and Kevin Allen (162,000) sit back down with top three stacks, while the likes of Chris Johnson (143,000), Jack Hardcastle (140,300), Michael Rosaman (140,200), and Brett Angell (116,000) have six figure stacks at their disposal.
