Grassroots UK tour winner receives £11,000 first prize, along with a €2,000 Unibet Open London package
The inaugural Unibet UK Tour, in association with Caesars Entertainment UK, launched in Brighton this weekend and it was local favourite Curtis Lambert who walked away the eventual winner. The £200+£20 main event brought a week-long festival of poker at the newly-refurbished Rendezvous Casino to a close, attracting a total of 245 entries to create a £49,000 prizepool.
Lambert found himself chip leader with 15 players remaining and managed to stay cool to cross the line as the eventual champion, getting £11k and a €2k Unibet Open package as reward. Simon Griffin also picked up a €2k Unibet Open package as the longest lasting online qualifier. Lambert had to navigate a strong field to claim his prize, with players like James Dempsey, Jamie Burland and Bruce Atkinson turning up to support their local room.
Talking afterwards, Lambert said: ‘I didn’t realise this event was taking place this weekend, so I turned up on Saturday expecting to play the regular £50 tournament! I managed to spin that up into the buy-in for the main event and despite bluffing off most of my stack in the first level I always believed I could go far. I’d like to thank Unibet, Caesars and the Rendezvous for putting on such a great tournament. I can’t wait to play the Unibet Open London event and hopefully continue the rungood!’
Lambert will now join a star-studded field in the Unibet Open London event, taking place at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino March 3-6. This tournament carries a £750+£75 buy-in and is the first of four stops on the Unibet Open this year.
Unibet Poker’s Marketing Manager, David Pomroy, said: ‘I think everyone who worked on putting this tour together, both Unibet and Caesers staff, are delighted with the launch we’ve had. The Rendezvous Casino is one of the most welcoming cardrooms I’ve ever visited and was an ideal place to kick things off. We also had a great winner in Curtis Lambert and I can’t wait to see how he does at the Unibet Open. We’re now looking forward to taking the feedback we’ve had from players at this event and making the next stop in Nottingham and the return to Brighton in June even better.’
After Brighton, the UK Tour will make a stop at the Alea Casino in Nottingham April 15-17 and online qualifiers for this leg are already underway here. The Nottingham leg will also form part of a week-long festival of poker, with the Main Event prizepool guaranteed at £40,000. A return to Brighton is penciled in for June 3-5, with Glasgow in October and Manchester in December rounding the 2016 season off. All new Unibet customers from the UK will receive a free €4 qualifier ticket for the tour, alongside the usual Unibet Poker welcome offer. The full tour details can be found here.
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