Professional poker player Les Fenton emerged as the champion of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) Goliath, a 6-day live poker tournament with a buy-in of £100 + £20 and a player field of 1,954. He won £31,210 along with a free entry to the GUKPT Champion of Champions event.
Fenton did not have the largest chip stack to begin with, but he emerged as the champion in just 5 hours after the final table play began. The prize pool was a whopping £200,000.
A quarter of the registration fees collected from players taking part in this event were diverted to a charity called Marie Curie Cancer Care, which has been associated with events such as the GUKPT and the Coventry City Football Club for a long time.
Forty-year-old Fenton is an architect in St. Albans. He played relentlessly and steadily and was the chip leader when the tournament dwindled into a heads-up between him and Mark Harding. He lost the chip lead position to Harding only for a short time. When the heads-up began, Harding had 18 million chips and Fenton had 30 million chips, but the mega event was over with Fenton emerging as the champion in just a few hours.
Fenton, who had an Ace of Diamonds and a Ten of Spades raised to 1,000,000 when Harding had an Ace of Spades and a Seven of Diamonds. When a Jack of Spades, an Eight of Clubs, an Eight of Hearts, a Nine of Hearts, and a Seven of Hearts were dealt on the board, Fenton got a straight and won the game while Harding turned out as the runner-up and collected a prize of £26,610.
Since the two players had struck a heads-up deal, each got a guaranteed £26,610. Both were competing for the free entry to the GUKPT Champion of Champions event, which was eventually won by Fenton. Speaking about this latest poker achievement, Fenton said that he felt good, adding,
I’ve entered a few big ones but I haven’t really gone deep for a while, not since my last final table GUKPT Luton 2010] but fortunately it’s finally come round.
Les Fenton and Mark Harding, who finished first and second, won £35,800 and £22,340, respectively. The players who finished third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth were Sung Hee Yun (£15,000), Jon Caplan (£12,000), Colin Inskip (£9,200), Gavin Manley (£6,600), Phil Froggatt (£4,800), Jacqueline Burrows (£3,740), and Kris Graham (£2,880), respectively.
