888poker has a lot to celebrate these days.
The 888poker Live Local series came back to the Aspers Casino on London this past weekend and for the first time, it came home.
Home means that Aspers and 888poker have reached an agreement to have the casino’s poker room now branded as the 888Live Poker Room.
As for the event, with almost 600 entries and over £100,000 in the prize pool, the tournament shattered the formerly announced £50,000 guarantee.
Even better 888poker's new ambassador, Kara Scott, went all the way to the final table where she finished third.
Host and player (Photo: Fabfotos)
Scott, Lövgren Score
Scott, the newly appointed 888poker Team member, opened the event and gave the traditional “shuffle up and deal."
Sofia Lövgren and Dominik Nitsche – 888poker’s top European players – also joined in with Sofia hitting quad eights on Day 1, much to the delight of her sponsor.
For the special occasion 888poker also invited two legends of English football: Andy Cole, formerly of Manchester United, and Danny Mills, formerly of Manchester City and Leeds United.
Excited for a bit of gamble the two joined the fun in the media tournament and brought some extra attention to the tournament.
At the end of four days of tournament poker (three Day 1s and one long final day), it was Ralph Baylor who secured the £22,500 main prize.
Scott impressively finished third for £10,250. Full results and payouts:
Ralph Baylor - £22,500
Bernard Okyere-Sasu - £16,000
Kara Scott - £10,250
Hugues Lavieu - £7,600
Amar Al Hussona - £5,690
Shah Raza - £4,570
Roberti Norman - £3,790
Enzo Del Piero - £3,020
Gary Lipman - £2,270
Ouco Le - £1,670
The 888Live Poker Room
As for the new poker room it's a 34 table poker-only area with no slot machines or any other games interfering.
It served as a stop of the £220 Live Local event for the first time. Tere is also some space reserved for cash games at all times.
John Scanlon, head of poker at Aspers Casino, explains the agreement with 888poker.
“It’s a 12-month partnership to cross promote live poker with online poker. Because of how strong 888 are in the UK market it made sense to do the partnership with them.”
“There are a lot of synergies between Aspers and our mind set in how we see poker developing in the future. There is going to be a full calendar of events, varying from this live local level which is £220, going up to maybe even higher than £880 so there will be something for different levels of players.
"We’re going to make it as aspirational as possible. We run lots of satellites and promotions. One of the other things that really attracted us to 888 is how they promote to their players and keep them engaged.”
The Aspers Casino is situated in the East of London on the second floor of the massive Westfield mall on Montfichet Road.
Join the gang.
Six Stops in Spain
With the smash hit Aspers event in the books the 888Live and 888Live Local tours hit the road again for several stop across the continent.
There will not only be regular events at the Aspers Casino but plenty of stops in idyllic locations, six of which alone will be in Spain.
The €440 Live events with one extra day reserved for sports and cultural activities are back, too.
The first one took place in Innsbruck, Austria last month, which you can read about here. To become part of the fun, get your own account at 888poker now!
