Fabian Quoss has outlasted a 195-strong field to win the Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour (GUKPT) £2,500 Grand Final in London. Forgetting the £138,750 prize money for a moment, the German Quoss also earned glory by defeating triple-crown champ Jake Cody heads up to take the title. Given the year Cody’s had, that’s quite the accomplishment in itself. Mind you, Quoss also won the German Championship of Poker (GCOP) in August, so he’s having a pretty good 2011 as well. Cody took £115k for finishing second, while UK pro Lalit Khajuria took third and £59k.
Danilo Donnini earned a sweet 272k Swiss francs (CHF) for defeating 481 other players at the Italian Poker Tour Campione main event. Serbia’s Mikica Mitrovic withstood Donnini’s dominance the longest, earning CHF 181k for the runner-up finish. Italy’s Rosa Giacomo took home CHF 102k for finishing third.
Anas Tadini has taken the PokerStars France Poker Series Sunfest Mazagan in Morocco. Tadini thoroughly dominated the €1,200 main event field of 305 players, holding the chip lead after both Days 1, 2 and, most importantly, throughout the final table. Tadini earned €80k for the victory, with heads-up opponent Daniel Hogstrom earning €51k and third-place finisher Richard Amsellem taking home €33k.
Australian pro Oliver Speidel has entered the record books as the winner of the inaugural Manny Pacquiao World Poker Event at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Manila. The Asian Poker Tour-sanctioned event attracted almost 150 entrants to the Asia Poker Sports Club, but it’s Speidel who’s going home with the P2.2m (US $50,650) top prize. Filipino Czardy Rivera was runner-up, earning P1.2m, while South Korean Sim Jae Kyung took third and P600k.
Richard Sinclair has taken the UK & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) Champion of Champions freeroll event at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham. Scotsman Sinclair will now receive all his buy-ins and hotel accommodations gratis throughout the UKIPT Season 3 stops (the first of which is in Galway starting Feb. 16).
Definitely not a freeroll event, the World Series of Poker’s Big One for One Drop has managed to find 22 deep-pocketed players (full list here) willing to ante up the $1m buy-in, making it an official WSOP bracelet event at next year’s tournament. The brainchild of Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, the Big One will see $111,111 of each buy-in donated to One Drop, a charitable NGO devoted to providing clean drinking water in third world countries. As things stand, the Big One champ will claim $8.89m ($173k more than Pius Heinz took home for winning the 2011 WSOP main event), but if seven more kajillionaires sign up, the top prize will exceed 2006 WSOP winner Jamie Gold’s all-time richest poker prize of $12m.
