GUKPT Luton sees stars, crowns Clark

Despite betting on himself to win, Roland De Wolfe didn't even make it past Day 1b of the GUKPT event in Luton.

A strict dress code didn't deter poker players from heading to Luton last weekend for the next leg of the Grosvenor Poker Tour. Suit and tie in hand, 315 players turned out for the £1,000 event.

Some of the well-known pros who showed up for the event were David Colclough, Ram Vaswani, Lucy Rokach, Roland De Wolf, Rolf Slotboom and Surindar Sunar. Not many of them made it past their first day in the event though.

Surindar Sunar was the only one of those on that list to make it into Day 2, despite De Wolfe's bet on himself that he was going to win the whole thing.

Instead, it was a sharp-dressed Dave Clark, from Colchester, who conquered Leg 7 of the tour to take home £97,300 plus an additional £10,000 from an event sponsor.

He was one of 12 players who made it to the final day and made the cut of the final table of nine as well. Alan Vinson was leading going into the final table with 595,000 in chips, while Clark was comfortably right in the middle of the pack with 378,000.

Though short-stacked, Jonothon Butters doubled up early to put himself back in the running. First out ended up being Ben Turnstill, who was taken out by Clark's pocket queens.

Adam Stoneham went out in eighth place, with Tony Ringe and Ian Herbert right behind him.

According to the GUKPT Web site, Jan Magnus Brevik, from Oslo, was the first Scandinavian to make one of the tourament's final tables. Making a final table would be as far as he would go though, as he was taken out by Clark to claim fifth place.

The bust-out left Clark with the chip lead, though his opponents weren't too far behind.

Vinson was the next casualty, going out in fourth place against Warren Woolridge's pocket nines. Butters was the next to go, finally getting Clark and Woolridge to heads-up play.

On the hand that finally ended the battle, Clark called the big blind with J-9, and Woolridge checked it with his Q-5. The flop brought K-4-J rainbow, and Woolridge went all-in.

Clark calls, having paired up his jack on the board, and the turn and river bring eights, giving him two pair and the win.

The final table results were as follows:

The next stop on the GUKPT will be Sept. 6-9 in Plymouth.

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