The long, 8-year wait for the return of the EPT series to London was ended this year, and right from the start, this festival handed out trophies to well-known names in world poker. Even if the start of the festival did not bring any excitement with the participation, at least UKIPT, which many consider together with Eureka and Estrellas to be the "Mini ME" of the whole series, made the mood better.
This year's UKIPT ME produced a record 1,458 entries by local standards, from which the 6-place final table was formed after two days. It also featured Martin Jacobson, the Swedish WSOP Main Event champion from 2004. His starting position was not the best, but in the end it was him who took home the trophy. It is Jacobsen's third EPT title, which earned him a £232,300 reward, which only confirmed his position as the Swedish number one.
On the other side of the spectrum of events, we will go from those more affordable and mass, to the most expensive. Next on the schedule after the £25k one-dayer was a tournament with a price tag of £50,000. Juan Pardo had a great game in it, taking home the trophy and almost a quarter of a million pounds from the first event (£10k Mystery Bounty). He also made it to the final heads-up in this tournament, where he had to bow down to Henrik Hecklen, for whom this triumph is the first EPT title worth £652,700.
After a few days of tinkering, the weekend event has already arrived and with it the main tournament of the entire series. The latter attracted 262 players to the game on the first opening day, of which 83 players got to stack stacks after nine levels of play, including names such as Kenny Hallaert (124,000), Jack Sinclair (114,500), Ramon Colillas (86,000), Dimitar Danchev (84,500), Daniel Dvoress (62,500) or Timothy Adams (59,000).
The second and last introductory day produced a total of 452 entries, from which a group of 156 advanced was formed by the end of the day. Among them there are names like Danny Tang (156,500), Adrian Mateos (101,500), Erik Seidel (87,500), Chris Moorman (37,000) and Martin Jacobson (36,500). The German professional Ole Schemion is at the head of the group with a stack of 280,500 (187bb), who already has almost $18 million in live tournament winnings on his account, including a WSOP bracelet and a WPT title, which means that the missing piece in the form of an EPT title would complete his prestigious Triple Crown title.
