Although massive player fields in live tournament poker are the main domain of the Vegas WSOP, there is no shortage of massive events outside the US either. While the largest European poker room in the Rozvadov's King's Casino probably has all possible successes and records on the old continent, it still lacks one.
We are talking about the largest poker tournament in terms of the number of entries, which is taken by The Goliath every year. The tournament, organized at The Grosvenor Coventry casino, has never carried an attractive guarantee (the last time it was only a £100,000 guarantee for the winner), but despite this it managed to literally fill a football stadium (in 2018 it took place at the Ricoh Arena with 7,564 entries).
The last record this tournament managed to set before pandemic was in August 2019, when the £125 buy-in was paid a total of 9,300 times, producing a prize pool worth £911,410. The next two years brought only a patch in the form of the online edition of this tournament, which produced 2,013 and 2,722 entries, so we had to wait until these days to break the record again.
The tenth anniversary edition slightly increased the buy-in to the level of £150, but gave players information about the expected million prize pool. The magical border was really crossed this year, which was ensured by eight flights within seven days. A total of 5,470 players took care of an incredible 10,584 entries, setting the bar at an even higher level! The total value of the prize pool thus stabilized at the level of £1,270,080, of which a beautiful £200,000 was waiting for the winner.
After all the flights and another site in the form of day 2, the 42 best players presented themselves on the last playing day, and played for the aforementioned bonus and a beautiful trophy. Spectators could also watch the entire final day via Live Stream, which gradually revealed the name of the champion. That was Kyle Jeffrey, who took home a massive trophy and a full £200,000 without a deal.
FT final results:
- Kyle Jeffrey- £200,000
- Luke Cheslin- £134,000
- Charlie Tarimo- £89,120
- David Reed- £60,960
- Georgian Georgescu- £39,020
- Saied Yolmeh- £26,820
- Young Seo Yoon- £20,730
- Gareth Cresswell- £17,070
- Peter Norton- £14,630
Source: grosvenorcasinos.com, twitter.com
