A round-up of live tournament news including Said El-Yousfi winning the World Series of Poker Circuit Global Casino Championships, Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott honoured with the £1m Devilfish Cup, and America’s Poker Tour readies for their pilot.
Said El-Yousfi has won the WSOP Circuit Global Casino Championship at Harrah’s Cherokee.
Formerly, the WSOPC National Championships, the tournament organisers expanded by taking the circuit global in a bid to fly the WSOP flag to the low-mid stakes players from all around the world.
It’s a unique event; the last gold bracelet before the WSOP Main Event Final Table, and arguably one of the easiest routes to a bracelet in the WSOP calendar. To qualify for the event, you had to have won a 2015/16 WSOPC Main Event, ended as a WSOPC Casino Champion, or finished in the Top 52 point earners in the WSOPC Leaderboard.
The WSOP Top 100 Player of the Year (POY) point earners can pay $10,000 to play, as could gold ring winners throughout the season who didn’t qualify via the above methods. 26 players chose to exercise at least one of these rights, and the WSOP added their annual $1m in free money to the prize pool.
El-Yousfi earned his stripes by finishing as the Casino Champion when the WSOP visited Marrakech, Morocco in January. He cashed three times, making two final tables to secure his seat in Cherokee. He defeated Yasin Ahmady in heads-up. The final table also included Joe Kuether and Cody Pack.
Final Table Results
1. Said El-Yousfi – $343,256
2. Yasin Ahmady – $212,150
3. Joshua Turner – $150,851
4. Joe Kuether – $109,192
5. Sean Small – $80,483
6. Cody Pack – $60,427
7. Alexnader Rocha – $46,231
8. Brian Green – $36,054
9. Blake Whittington – $28,673
Previous winners of the event include Loni Harwood (2015), Dominik Nitsche (2014), Jonathan Hilton (2013), Ryan Eriquezzo (2012), and Sam Barnhart (2011).
The Devilfish Honoured With The Devilfish Cup
He might not have found a place in the Poker Hall of Fame, but the late, great Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott will be honoured by Dusk till Dawn (DTD), partypoker, and the World Poker Tour (WPT) Foundation after the creation of the Devilfish Cup.
Ulliott, who for many years was the UK’s all-time live tournament money earner, a former WSOP bracelet winner, a WPT winner, and Late Night Poker winner, passed away due to cancer in April 2015.
The inaugural Devilfish Cup will begin Mon, Oct 31, 2016. His former home, DTD, will host the event during the WPT UK Festival. The event will be a £5,300 buy-in with a £1m Guarantee. Tournament organisers will funnel a portion of the buy-in to the Marie Curie charity and a trust fund for Ulliott’s youngest daughter, Lucy.
According to an article in PokerNews, Rob Yong, the owner of DTD, visited Devilfish several times just before his death and during those conversations, he asked Devilfish how he would like people to remember him, and it was the Fish himself who suggested the creation of a high buy-in event to celebrate his memory. DTD has also renamed their bar “The Devilfish” and players ordering a double vodka and Red Bull will now refer to it as a “Devilfish.”
You can qualify for the Devilfish Cup via online satellites currently offered on partypoker.
America’s Poker Tour Set For October Debut
America’s Poker Tour is the latest live tournament enterprise to try and turn a profit in the American live tournament calendar. The idea comes from the minds of recent Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) Producer Fred Bevill and Operations Controller Derek Melicher.
The new team is not running before they can walk. There will be a single event in 2016 before taking stock and moving forward into 2017 with a potential ten event schedule. The Majestic Star Casino, Gary, Ind. will host the festival, and the feature event will be a $1,100 Main Event.
Comcast will broadcast the event locally in the Chicago area, and Poker Central have also agreed on a deal to show the event globally.
