Robert Baguley Captures Title and £210,400 at UKIPT Nottingham

Robert Baguley has beaten Iqbal Ahmed heads up to win UKIPT Nottingham, taking home £210,400 – the biggest prize awarded at a UKIPT Main Event.

Baguley, 60, is a retired landlord from Leicestershire who plays at host venue Dusk Till Dawn regularly – although usually for a maximum of £20! He qualified via a £100 live satellite and has overcome tough opposition after four long days of tournament poker.

All three starting flights at Dusk Till Dawn filled the club to capacity, with a total of 1,625 entrants creating a prizepool of £1,137,500 – the largest live field ever at a PokerStars sponsored event.

Baguley started the final table second to last in chips, while with more than three times his stack Iqbal Ahmed looked unstoppable. He had been in first place in the chip rankings since Day 2. After a dramatic fall-and-comeback combination, during the latter part of which he eliminated four players in quick succession, Ahmed started the heads up back with a 2:1 lead. Baguley, however, took down every key pot thereafter until finally eliminating the professional online player after just four levels of play at the final table.

Even Ahmed’s £125,000 runner-up prize surpasses Gareth Walker’s first place money here last year, the final table in total awarding £676,450.

UKIPT Nottingham: Ahmed Retains Huge Lead Heading into Final Table

The final table is set here at UKIPT Nottingham. From the 1,625 entrants who attended this £700 + £70 Main Event, the field has been reduced to just 8, one of whom will walk away from Dusk Till Dawn with a mammoth first prize of £210,400.

The final line-up:

Iqbal Ahmed, United Kingdom, PokerStars Player, 6,680,000
Ian Senior, United Kingdom, 3,765,000
James Cummings, United Kingdom, 2,575,000
Nick Woodward, United Kingdom, 2,445,000
Grant Pirie, United Kingdom, 2,430,000
Hasmukh Khodiyara, United Kingdom, PokerStars Player, 2,350,000
Robert Baguley, United Kingdom, 2,115,000
Barry McMahon, Ireland, 1,750,000

Making a deep run but busting before the final was Chris Brammer, who added his £11,350 prize for finishing 11th to his already lengthy string of live cashes and his online triple crown.

Also in the deep-run category were Craig Burke, Tom Kugelstadt and Majid Iqbal - the latter finishing 10th and bringing the would-be finalists on to the same patch of felt.

Notable short stack is Barry McMahon, who just happens to be the best friend of recently-crowned UKIPT Galway champion Emmett Mullin. Mullin’s now swapped the final table for the rail and will be cheering on the shortest stack. At the other end of the chip spectrum lies pro Iqbal Ahmed who seems to have spent most of the tournament as a huge chip leader. Ahmed enters the final battle with nearly a 2:1 chip lead on nearest rival Ian Senior.

UKIPT Nottingham: Ahmed Leads after Elimination-fest Day 2

At this point, Iqbal Ahmed had emerged at the top of the remaining 76 players, his neat stack of 1,580,000 so huge that it was encroaching on his neighbours’ table zones. This is a chip lead such as dreams are made of – his nearest stack rival is Grant Pirie with 1,019,500, and no one else has broken the seven-figure barrier.

It was all about the bust-outs today at Dusk Till Dawn; no longer in contention for the £210,400 first prize are UKIPT Galway champion Emmett Mullin, UKIPT Season 2 Leaderboard winner Sam Razavi, EPT winner Pieter de Korver and many of the Day 1 front runners like Marcin Milde, Adebayo Odetoyinbo, and Alex Martin. The aforementioned made the prize positions, however, cashing for at least £1,240.

Also on the other side of the rail are Team PokerStars Pros Jude Ainsworth and Liv Boeree, the former busted by Chris Brammer in the very first orbit of the first level. Brammer’s early propulsion to a 250,000 stack stood him in good stead throughout the day; he ends with 616,000 (lying in 9th). Also near the top of the chip counts are Liam Batey (896,500), Nathan Kiely (869,000) and Devron Hasselnook (782,000).

UKIPT Nottingham attracted a total of 1,625 entrants of 48 nationalities, comfortably outstripping its £1 million guarantee. Day 3 begins at noon tomorrow when play will continue to the final table.

End of Day 2 Players and Chip Counts

UKIPT Nottingham: Ken Isaksen Tops the Day 1b Chip Counts

Day 1b at UKIPT Nottingham topped even Day 1a’s eye-opening number of entrants with a single day’s total of 557 players stumping up the £700 + £70 buy-in to take a shot at a tournament with a £1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.

The field for the second start day was noticeably more international, with contingents from Ireland, Iceland, Poland and Italy (among others) vying against the hundreds of local entrants. The player whose struggle ended in chip dominance was Norwegian Ken Isaksen who will begin Day 2 slightly behind Day 1a's big stack as he has amassed 227,600 chips. Day 1a's lists of entrants and survivors can be found on ukipt.com.

Also in today’s field were Surinder Sunar, Carlo Citrone, Jamie Burland, UKIPT multi-casher Sam MacDonald, Team PokerStars Pro Victor Ramdin and Team PokerStars Online player Mickey Petersen who recently won EPT Copenhagen. While Ramdin and MacDonald hit the rail early, Citrone made it until one level before the end and Petersen missed making Day 2 by a matter of minutes. Sunar survives with 73,600.

Tomorrow reverts to the start once again, as Day 1c brings the opening of the tournament to an end with what will probably be a yet larger number of fresh entrants. Watch the action unfold throughout the day on the PokerStarsblog.

End of Day 1 Players and Chip Counts

UKIPT Nottingham: Marcin Milde Leads Remaining 100 from Mammoth Day 1a

It’s not every day that a tournament guarantees £1,000,000, let alone a £700 + £70 Main Event, but earlier this month, Dusk Till Dawn announced that the UKIPT Nottingham leg would have such a prize pool. Their confidence has been proven well founded, as hundreds of players turned up to buy in on the day, joining the host of PokerStars qualifiers and DTD regulars for 11 hours at the poker tables. In total, a field of 532 have already had their turn at the felt – and there are two starting days left to run.

Amongst those taking their seats today were Marc Goodwin, Mickey Wernick, Redmond Lee and pro footballer Antonio German – however of these only Goodwin and Wernick made Day 2. Right at the top of the 1a chip counts is Marcin Milde from Leeds, a young online player like Ben Carpenter who is currently lying in 3rd behind Sean Byrne.

The attrition rate in the early levels was high, with players like Bambos Xanthos, Paul Jackson, Rick Trigg and Jerome Bradpiece losing their 15,000 starting stacks before late registration finally closed. Also failing to make Day 2, but by a narrower margin, was last year’s UKIPT Nottingham champion Gareth Walker, who won £109,000 at this very venue.

The earliest player to rise as a definitive chip leader (his stack reaching six figures in level 6) was local player Tom Kugelstadt, who finished up with 112,700. As the night wore on, however, the unmistakeable voice of Adebayo Odetoyinbo could still be heard coming from behind a very large stack - he currently lies in 7th place with 167,400.

Play starts tomorrow at midday as Day 1b is sure to welcome a similar horde of players eager to get stuck into what is likely to be one of the largest live events of the year in the UK

End of Day 1a Players and Chip Counts