Simon Deadman Leads the 2015 WPT UK Main Event After Day 1a
While the £250,000 guaranteed World Poker Tour UK High Roller and WPT500 UK were busy working their way towards crowning their respective champions, the £2,000+£200 buy-in WPT UK Main Event, featuring a £1 million guaranteed prize pool, kicked off in earnest and attracted 148 players through the welcoming doors of Dusk Till Dawn.
Over the course of 10 levels, each 60-minutes in length, almost two-thirds of the field had fallen by the wayside, leaving 56 players with the welcomed task of having to bag chips as the witching hour neared.
Simon Deadman, a familiar face at Dusk Till Dawn, ended Day 1a as the runaway chip leader. His 312,500 stack is so large that he could double any of the players who finished fifth or less and still not be eliminated from the tournament. Deadman has a wonderful record in live events as of late and is regarded as one of the best poker players in the world, not just in the confines of the United Kingdom.
The nearest anyone got to Deadman was Daniel Parsonage, who amassed 201,300 chips by the time the curtain came down on the opening flight’s proceedings. A relative unknown in the grand scheme of things, Parsonage looks set to make a name for himself in Nottingham if he keeps up the pace of his blistering start.
Plenty of other notable players punched their tickets to Thursday’s Day 2 including WPT Prague winner Alex Goulder (162,300), 2015 WPT500 Las Vegas winner Craig Varnell (161,800), Jamie O’Connor (148,300), Mitchell Johnson (125,800), Ben Jackson (103,000), WSOP bracelet winner Craig McCorkell (101,000), Ben Dobson (50,100), Richard Trigg (38,200), Paul Jackson (34,700), Ben Vinson (31,800), Nick Hicks (24,800) and Deadman’s wife, Shola Akindele Deadman (11,000).
Day 1b commences at 12:00 p.m. UK time on Wednesday and needs 352 players if the £1 million guarantee is to be hit. Among the expected bumper crowd are a host of partypoker qualifiers plus some players who busted on Day 1a including Marcel Luske and the reigning champion Matas Cimbolas.
Tune into PokerNews from midday on Wednesday for all of the action from Day 1b of the 2015 WPT UK Main Event.