Ladbrokes’ flagship European online poker festvial drew to a close with ‘pands’ winning the main event
The Ladbrokespoker.com Online European Championship of Poker III (LEOCOP) came to an electrifying close on Sunday. The main event winner, twenty four year old newcomer to Ladbrokespoker.com ‘pands’, beat 250 other players to scoop the first prize of $225,000 (£118,000).
The LEOCOP, Ladbrokes’ annual seven-day online poker festival took place from 15-21 October. The event saw Ladbrokes players going head-to-head with some of Europe’s top poker professionals all vying for a share of the $1,170,000 (£585,620) guaranteed prize pool. Big names included defending champ Grazza, Roy ‘The Boy’ Brindley, Nebuchad, who played in Ladbrokes first ever King of cash games, midweek and "Jaffacake" Jeff Kimber.
For the first time this year, the main event was held over two days, enabling players to take an overnight break in-between tough matches. The new two-day format was devised to be more in-keeping with offline events and combat fatigue.
After five days that saw some of poker’s finest battling it out on the table in a mixture of games, the LEOCOP III main event final saw 19 players make the second day of play.
With the other contestants long gone, the heads-up contesttook place between ‘dilling 89’ and ‘pands’. While dillin 89 finished in second place winning himself $146,250 (£71,500), ‘pands’ took down the LEOCOP title and an impressive $225,000.
Cbass, aka Beverly Pace, wife of comic and poker player Norman Pace, once again proved herself to be pushover by coming 8th place in the LEOCOP III event. The mighty Cbass has an already impressive record this year, including coming fifth in this year’s European Ladies Championship, netting her prizes totalling over $70,000. Beverly Says, ‘I’d like to use my success as an example and encourage other women to take up playing poker, as it’s a skilled card game that is extremely social and great fun’.