$ 10,000 World Championship Heads-up

John Duthie is a man with many claims to fame in the poker world. In 2000, he won the inaugural Poker Million TV show for a cool £1,000,000 before going on to secure his legacy in the poker world by creating the European Poker Tour, which has since become the world’s biggest poker tour and is soon entering it’s sixth season.

Last night Duthie, from London, nearly got his hands on a first WSOP bracelet after getting all the way to the final round in the hotly-anticipated $ 10,000 World Championship Heads-up No Limit Hold’em event.

In the best of three contest with law student Leo Wolpert, Duthie took a 1-0 lead before losing the second game in just nine hands. From there, the two embarked on a marathon match lasting over two hundred hands before Wolpert eventually came out the winner and $ 625,682 richer. For his runner-up finish Duthie took home $ 386,636 but will be sorely disappointed not to have won after coming so close.

The field for this event had to be capped at 256 runners so as to eliminate the possibility of players receiving byes after an odd number of entrants. That field was packed with the world’s best players though including Tom Dwan, defending champion Kenny Tran and quarter-finalist Johnny Chan.

A win for Duthie would have given the UK an unprecedented three bracelets in this year’s WSOP after JP Kelly and Roland de Wolfe’s previous triumphs.