He came, he played, he conquered. Congratulations to 46 year-old David Lloyd on taking down this year’s GUKPT Brighton Main Event for a cool £22,320
Lloyd who is coincidently the head of IT for the GUKPT’s travel partner MainEventTravel.com is a regular on the UK poker scene and with a host of strong finishes, the englishman appears to have a particular love affair with the GUKPT. Most notably, Lloyd final-tabled the GUKPT Reading Main Event last month, but eventually ended up busting in 8th place.
This year, the £550 Main Event in Brighton attracted some 198 players, compared to last year’s total of 165, creating a prizepool just shy of £100k, with the top 20 places taking a share of the money.
Heading into the third and final day, Lloyd’s chances of victory weren’t looking particularly strong due to a chip stack that was 13th of the 14 remaining players, but clearly this didn’t phase him in any way, in fact it seemed to do the complete opposite. Following a few hours play the final nine redrew for seats. By this point Lloyd was up to seventh, but still a long way off the lead. And his challenge almost came to an abrupt end when he got all his money into the middle with pocket Aces versus Piers Whyman who had Eights. An Eight on the turn left Lloyd dead to his two remaining outs, but clearly the luck was on his side this time, as one of those Aces appeared on the river, giving Lloyd a much need chip injection.
From there he patiently picked his spots and slowly climbed his way up the leaderboard. After several further hours of action Lloyd would again find himself up against Whyman but this time it was heads-up and for the title.
With the pair holding virtually identical chip stacks everything was in place for an exciting climax. But Lloyd once again found himself getting lucky when his A-8 all-in shove beat Whyman’s pocket Kings after an Eight on the turn and river gave him trips for an unlikely double up. Now with a convincing 7-to-1 chip lead it was Lloyd’s to lose. The final hand came only a few minutes later when Whyman three-bet shoved over the top of Lloyd’s 100k raise. Whyman turned over K-5, while Lloyd showed A-T. The flop brought an Ace and a King changing nothing. The turn and river were blanks and David Lloyd celebrated on becoming the latest GUKPT champion.
Speaking right after his victory Lloyd was quick to praise the poker gods, “Where did the dealer find running Eights from? That was unreal. I ran good and made some good reads for three days, then got extremely lucky right at the end. I think I had more than my fair share of good hands.”
Here’s how the final table ended up:
1st David Lloyd – £22,320
2nd Piers Whyman – £18,500
3rd Danny Tran – £18,500
4th Dan Bushell – £10,000
5th Matt Bushell – £5,960
6th Graham Fabrace – £4,700
7th Nik Stylianou – £3,720
8th Perri Fox – £2,720
9th Gary Sandford – £1,980
