Ludovich Geilich Wins Blackpool GUKPT Main Event

The mercurial Scottish player had led the way on day two, with a massive chip lead over the other remaining 15 players who made it through Saturday’s second day of play. Not content with having almost double the stack of his nearest challengers, he continued the final day in the same vein that he had conducted himself throughout the tournament and began to pull away further, his stack growing to 850,000 fairly quickly after the restart of play. 

By the time they had reached the final table of nine players, Geilich had breached the 1m chip barrier, with a stack of 1,175,000, still almost double the stack of his closest challenger Andrew ‘Stato’ Hulme on 641,000. Keith Johnson, who had gone into the day as the shortest of the remaining players, also went on an early tear on day two, surviving all-ins and then eliminating other short stacks as he climbed his way into fifth place on the leaderboard by the time the final started.

The game then sped up again and after a spate of quick-fire eliminations, the tournament was down to the final two players. Kevin Houghton took 5th place while Keith Johnson’s 4th place will have been much higher a finish than he might have expected at the beginning of the day. Andrew Hulme was the third place finisher, succumbing to Ludo, with pocket sevens versus the Scot’s AJ. All this happened in the space of five hands.

Callum Gordon is another one of the tour’s over-achievers and he seems to excel in Blackpool. He was runner up at the last GUKPT Blackpool main event in 2023, however that tournament ended in a three-way deal (in which he got the most cash but not the official 1st place) meaning that by the time he got to face Ludo heads up, he had gone through almost two entire Blackpool main events without hitting the rail. He now moves into second place on the National Poker League leaderboard but it still some way adrift of 1st place Calogero Morreale, who was unable to play the Blackpool main event, as his wife went into labour during the festival. He reportedly had to abandon a stack in a satellite tournament before heading to the hospital.

After a period of cautious play at the start of the heads-up stage, Callum managed to close the gap on Ludovic, pulling to within 300,000 chips of the pre-final day favourite. But the Scot soon re-asserted his dominance and by the time the final hand took place, he had nearly a 3-1 chip advantage. Holding 5♥5♦ on a 7♦8♥6♥3♠10♥ board, Callum raised all in for his remaining 950,000, going over the top of Ludovic’s 185,000 river bet. After a minute or so of contemplation, Ludovic made the call with K♣9♠ for a rivered straight, to bring the tournament to an end.

The tour now moves north to Scotland, where the GUKPT Edinburgh takes place from 4th-14th April. As already mentioned, man of the moment Ludovic Geilich will be both the defending Edinburgh champion and the reigning Blackpool champion when he takes his seat in the £1,000 main event.