The £2,500 buy-in main event of the Gala Great British Poker Tour has taken place at the Bristol Harbourside Gala Casino, and it has been won by Joe Beevers.

The Englishman saw off a field of over 100 players.  These included names attracted to the event such as Phil Laak, Jamie Gold, Jennifer Tily, Barny Boatman, Roland De Wolfe, Antonio Esfandiari, Ram Vaswani and Surindar Sunar.

Inevitably, as the competition of international poker is so strong, not all of these names made it to the final table.

The players that did make it to the final table were, Rob Akery, Barny Boatman, Neil Channing, Matt Tyler, Manuel Palanca, Roland De Wolfe, Charalambos ‘Bambos’ Xanthos and of course, Joe Beevers.

The first player to be eliminated was Neil Channing, as the board paired fives, which enabled Charalambos ‘Bambos’ Xanthos to take him out with his five-deuce.  Channing picked up £8,000 for his eighth place spot.

Bambos was in form again as he eliminated Matt Tyler into seventh place.  Tyler took home £9,250 in prize money.

Joe Beevers and Manuel Palanca got into a battle of pocket queens against Ace King.  Beevers held the Queens which then developed into quads on the turn and river, which eliminated Palanca into sixth place.  He took home £11,000 for his efforts.  Next out, was Roland De Wolfe as he lost out to Barry Boatman.  Good news for De Wolfe is that his fifth place may have secured him the UK player of the year race.  His efforts at this event earned him £16,000 together with a seat at the 2008 GBPT Festival of choice.

Bambos found his early form desert him as he was busted out by Rob Akery.  His fourth place finish earned him £22,250 as well as a seat at the 2008 GBPT Festival of choice.

This leads us on to the three-way action between Akery and the two Hendon mobsters, Beevers and Boatman.  On a king-queen-two flop, Boatman gets all his money in holding King-Five and is quickly called by Akery holding King-Queen.  Therefore, Boatman was eliminated into third place.  The Hendon mobster picked up £36,500 plus a seat in the EPT tournament of his choice.

And so, the heads-up action was fought out between Beevers and Akery.  Beevers won with a full house on Hand 161.  For his runners-up prize, Akery was awarded £53,250 and a seat in the Aussie Millions. 

For winning the title, Joe Beevers has earned himself £87,500 as well as a seat in the Five Diamond World Classic.

On winning the title Beevers said, “The GBPT is a fantastic series of events, and having played in four of the regional tournaments, I’m delighted to have won the big one.  I’ve been playing poker since way before it became popular, and the GBPT is a chance to go back to the good old days.  It’s the kind of tournament we enjoyed 15 years ago – with normal people playing in a normal casino with great organisation and great staff.  Everything was first class. 

“The final table was like playing against friends, because I knew five of them, and now I’m looking forward to going to the Bellagio in Las Vegas and then coming back to defend my title next year.”

The 2007 GBPT comprised of five regional festivals in Edinburgh, Teeside, Nottingham, Bournemouth and Leeds.  Finalists from these events qualified for the Grand Final main event in Bristol.

The event is to be shown at a later date on ITV and it should make for good television.

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