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Festival Wrap-Up: Unbelievable Comebacks Highlight the partypoker Tour London Finish
- Daniel Smith wins Main Event and £22,500 after overcoming Chris Yong.
- Ben Skinner stages two major comebacks to claim Mini Main (£14,300).
- Vitor Teixeira tops Faded Spade event, adding to festival’s list of champions.
Daniel Smith arrived at the partypoker Tour London Main Event with a free satellite ticket and left with £22,500.
The Welsh player overturned a sizeable heads-up deficit against Chris Yong to secure the biggest live score of his career, completing a London stop that also saw Ben Skinner stage an unlikely comeback in the Mini Main Event.
Smith Denies Yong in Main Event Finale
The £500 Main Event attracted 190 entries and distributed a £100,000 prize pool among the top 28 finishers.
Smith and Yong had separated themselves from much of the field before the final day. Smith returned with 2,455,000 chips, slightly ahead of Yong’s 2,070,000, while third-placed Barry Donovan held 1,100,000.
Several recognisable players remained in contention. Deniz Orhan was attempting to win another PartyPoker Tour Main Event, while Donovan and Yong both had enough chips to place immediate pressure on the shorter stacks.
Vikrum Mehta’s final-table stay proved the shortest. James Marshall followed in eighth, before Ivan Meister and James Korek were eliminated.
Matt Horn finished fifth for £6,250. Orhan’s attempt at another title then ended in fourth place, earning him £7,750 and leaving Smith, Yong and Donovan to contest the podium positions.
Donovan secured £10,000 in third, but his elimination left Smith facing an uphill battle.
Yong held 6,890,000 chips when heads-up play began, compared with Smith’s 2,605,000. Rather than forcing the issue immediately, Smith waited for spots where the initial disadvantage could be reversed.
One arrived when Smith’s pocket nines faced Yong’s pocket sixes. The larger pair remained ahead, giving Smith the double-up he needed to make the match competitive.
Smith then picked up pocket kings and continued building his lead. By the time the decisive all-in occurred, the momentum had moved entirely in his direction.
Playing blinds of 50,000/100,000, Yong pushed approximately 20 big blinds with king-seven of diamonds. Smith called with king-jack of clubs.
The ten-four-two flop came with three clubs, completing Smith’s flush immediately. Yong was unable to improve, and Smith’s rail began celebrating before the remaining community cards were dealt.
Yong earned £15,000 for second place, while Smith claimed the trophy and £22,500.
Smith had previously recorded an £18,000 result in a Bratislava Mystery Bounty event in 2023. His London victory moved beyond that mark and was made more unusual by the route he had taken into the tournament: a free satellite ticket.
Main Event Final Standings
| Placement | Player | Winnings |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daniel Smith | £22,500 |
| 2 | Chris Yong | £15,000 |
| 3 | Barry Donovan | £10,000 |
| 4 | Deniz Orhan | £7,750 |
| 5 | Matt Horn | £6,250 |
| 6 | James Korek | £5,000 |
| 7 | Ivan Meister | £4,000 |
| 8 | James Marshall | £3,250 |
| 9 | Vikrum Mehta | £2,500 |
Skinner Refuses to Stay Short-Stacked
Ben Skinner’s Mini Main victory required him to escape trouble more than once.
The £150 tournament recorded 697 entries, creating an £87,125 prize pool. Only 14 players reached the final day, with Sam Acheampong leading and Jaime Staples among the better-known players still involved.
Skinner, meanwhile, had just five big blinds when the final table began.
The first stage of his recovery came with pocket kings. The second arrived in a three-player all-in against Staples and Acheampong.
Skinner’s ace-jack of clubs was up against king-queen for Staples and pocket eights for Acheampong. Skinner claimed the main pot and tripled his stack, while Acheampong won the side pot to send Staples out in seventh.
Ayush Gandhi and Mohamed Kader were subsequently eliminated, while Acheampong’s early advantage began to disappear. Carlos Estivill eventually ended the ambassador’s run in fourth place.
Skinner eliminated Michael Stanley in third after queen-jack improved against ace-five, setting up a heads-up contest with Estivill.
The two finalists made a deal before continuing. Estivill locked up £11,950 and Skinner £11,800, leaving a further £2,500 and the trophy to play for.
Estivill controlled the early phase and opened a 24,000,000-to-4,500,000 lead. Skinner doubled to remain alive and then began taking pots without showdown, gradually moving back toward level terms.
At one stage, Estivill attempted three streets of aggression on a paired board, only for Skinner to call down with ace-five after improving to top pair. That pot moved Skinner into a 15,000,000-to-13,000,000 lead and confirmed that the match had turned.
After almost two hours of heads-up play, Skinner completed the comeback and collected £14,300 in total.
His route to the trophy had included a five-big-blind final-table stack, a three-way all-in and a heads-up deficit of almost six to one. One comeback would have made a decent tournament story. Skinner apparently decided to include a spare.
Mini Main Final Standings
| Placement | Player | Winnings |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Skinner | £14,300* |
| 2 | Carlos Estivill | £11,950* |
| 3 | Michael Stanley | £7,250 |
| 4 | Sam Acheampong | £5,250 |
| 5 | Ayush Gandhi | £3,615 |
| 6 | Mohamed Kader | £2,600 |
| 7 | Jaime Staples | £2,000 |
| 8 | Timothy Scott | £1,450 |
| 9 | Dimitar Dimitrov | £1,100 |
Teixeira Tops Experienced Faded Spade Finalists
Away from the two headline tournaments, Vitor Teixeira won the £200 Faded Spade NLH event.
Teixeira came through a field of 30 entries before defeating Dara O’Kearney heads-up. The victory was worth £2,050 from the £5,100 prize pool, with O’Kearney collecting £1,300.
Barry Carter took third place for £800, while James Smith finished fourth and Tsz Wong fifth.
The result added Teixeira to a long list of side-event champions crowned across the nine-day festival, which included No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, bounty and mixed-game formats.
Smith’s Main Event victory supplied the final headline, but the London stop had already delivered its share of unlikely winners by then. Both he and Skinner reached their respective trophies from positions that had looked decidedly unpromising—proof, at least in tournament terms, that the chip count is only completely reliable once somebody has all of them.
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