In preparation for the PokerStars UKIPT, Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham hosted a £250 buy-in deepstack from 30 April-4 May.
With two online flights and two live flights the £150,000 guarantee for the event was smashed by more than £60,000, with Jiri Sladkovsky taking the lion's share of the prize pool.
With a total of 870 entries, the prize pool reached £217,500 with 107 finishers getting paid at least a min-cash of £600.
Sunday, 4 May, saw 299 runners return to fight it out for the money... the top 50 finishers also being rewarded with a seat to the upcoming £1 million guaranteed UKIPT main event later in the month.
The nine finalists were Tony Vu with 4.5m chips; Mick Hardy with 6m; George Baldock with 5m; Carl Williams on 2.5m; Sladkovsky on 4m; Maria Demetriou on 3m; Mick Corrigan with 5m; Leo McClean on 8m; and chip leader Nicholas Banks with 10m.
Demetriou was the final table’s first casualty, jamming 10 big blinds with A6 and running into the pocket rockets of Sladkovsky. The board ran out void of any drama and Demetriou busted in ninth place.
Demetriou was joined on the sidelines by EPT London finalist McClean. He found himself all-in for 2.7m chips with A7 and Mick Hardy looked him up with pocket nines. A 4-Q-8-Q-4 board failed to come to McClean’s rescue and he became the eighth-place finisher.
Corrigan busted in seventh place after moving all-in for 600,000 (three big blinds) with pocket 10s. He was called by Banks with AJ. A jack on the flop and an ace on the turn were more than enough to send Corrigan to the rail.
Sixth place went to Williams after a battle of the blinds with Sladkovsky. A pre-flop raising war resulted in Williams being all-in with A9 against Sladkovsky with AK. Neither player improved their hand by the river and Sladkovsky won by virtue of his king kicker.
Five-handed play lasted the best part of an hour before Vu was eliminated. After losing the majority of his stack, when his AQ was second best to Sladkovsky’s pocket eights, he pushed his micro-stack into the middle with what turned out to be 73 and lost to Sladkovsky’s AJ.
Baldock was the next player out, losing a flip to Hardy, who also accounted for Banks who open-jammed for 8m from the small blind with pocket threes. Hardy snap-called with nines and it was down to a heads-up battle with Sladkovsky.
Hardy went into the heads-up battle with a large chip lead, but Sladkovsky doubled early on and then found aces on the very next hand and doubled up again against A2 to take a 32m to 12m lead.
The tournament finally came to a conclusion at 8.05am when there was an all-in and call on a 2-K-5 flop. With Hardy holding K5 and Sladkovsky K6, Sladkovsky would probably have jumped at the offer of a split pot at that stage but a three on the turn and four on the river gifted him an unlikely straight that brought the tournament to an end.
Final result
1 Jiri Sladkovsky £23,000
2 Mick Hardy £13,650
3 Nicholas Banks £9,000
4 George Baldock £6,000
5 Tony Vu £4,500
6 Carl Williams £3,600
7 Mick Corrigan £2,900
8 Leo McClean £2,300
9 Maria Demetriou £1,800
