The World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) is coming to the United Kingdom this March, bringing with it 12 ring-awarding championship events, including a £1,100 buy-in £500,000 guaranteed Main Event that you can follow right here at PokerNews.

Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham, United Kingdom, will be packed to the rafters from March 5-20 as players from the UK, Europe, and further afield descend on the home of British Poker for what is an incredible WSOPC schedule.

WSOPC Nottingham kicks off at 3:00 p.m. GMT on March 5 with the first of five flights in the £230 No-Limit Hold’em Mini Main Event. With £100,000 guaranteed plus 10x £1,100 WSOPC Main Event seats added into the mix, the Mini Main Event is sure to be a massive hit, and is the perfect way to warm up for the bustling series.

There is a brief hiatus after Day 1A of the Mini Main Event, with the series resuming on March 8. However, from that point on, the WSOPC UK action is non-stop until the crowning of the last three champions on March 20.

PokerNews Becomes the Official Media Partner of Dusk Till Dawn

One of the last champions to be crowned will be the 2023 WSOPC UK Main Event winner. There is a £500,000 guarantee on the Main Event’s prize pool, but PokerNews would be shocked if that figure is not blown out of the park, not least because of the lure of the WSOPC but also because Dusk Till Dawn has a reputation for hosting the biggest and most prestigious live poker events.

It is not only the massive Main Event and the value-added Mini Main Event that have the poker community talking because all 12 ring-awarding events are sure to attract players like moths to flames.

There are £560 Seniors (50+) and £170 Ladies events, in addition to the £340 Colossus, £450 Monster Stack, and £560 6-Handed events. High Rollers are catered for, too, with a £5,300 Super High Roller and a £2,700 High Roller on the agenda. The series concludes on March 20 with the final days of the Main Event, the £250 buy-in £50,000 guaranteed Closer, and a £560 buy-in £25,000 guaranteed Mystery Bounty event.

WSOP International Circuit UK Schedule

*plus 10x £1,100 Main Event seats

You may recall that Dusk Till Dawn hosted a WSOPC stop in April 2019. The 2019 WSOPC UK Main Event saw 1,023 players buy in, and Russia’s Andrey Veselov outlasted them all. Veselov captured the coveted gold WSOPC ring plus £114,530 after a heads-up deal with Hasmukh Khodiyara, who banked £111,935.

Other luminaries such as Timothy Chung, Fraser MacIntyre, Jack O’Neill, Andrew Hulme, Jeff Kimber, and Orpen Kisacikoglu also saw a return on their investments.

PokerNews‘ live reporting team will be on the ground through the £500,000 guaranteed Main Event, bringing you all of the action, as it happens, from the first pitched cards to the crowning of the worthy champion.

After seven and half hours of play, Day 2 of the €25,000 No Limit Hold’em III at PokerStars European Poker Tour Paris wrapped up with Stephen Chidwick taking down the final high-stakes tournament of the series. Chidwick overcame Adrian Mateos in heads-up play after a war of attrition to collect the title, trophy and €324,500 allocated for first place.

Mateos entered the day as the clear chip leader and put his monster stack to work for most of the day; however, when play got to four-handed, Chidwick sprang to life and ended Mateos’ dominance.

There were 22 players to kick off today’s proceedings, with nine players opting to take advantage of the late registration period that was open until Day 2 got underway.

This brought the overall entries to 40 and they created the €940,800 prize pool where the top six finishers would make the money.

Final Table Payouts

Day 2 Recap

As mentioned, there were a handful of players such as Jonathan Jaffe, Nick Petrangelo, Mike Watson, Bruno Volkmann and Kazuhiko Yotsushika who decided to hop into the fray at the last possible moment. However, their attendance was brief and they were quickly sent to the wrong side of the rail.

Andrew Lichtenberger, Motoyoshi Okamura, Thomas Muehloecker, Joao Vieira, Sam Greenwood, Galen Hall and Teun Mulder were all players to bag from Day 1. But like the names above, they fell short of the money on the last day of EPT Paris.

On the final table bubble, Aleksejs Ponakovs was left short by Daniel Dvoress after the latter paired up on the river to take the pot. Day 2 entrant Felipe Ketzer finished Ponakovs off moments later.

When the final table formed, the action remained fast and furious, with Juan Pardo being ejected from the final nine in twenty minutes. His pocket nines were pipped by the pair of tens held by Dvoress and he found no assistance on the runout.

Ten minutes later, Ketzer fell on the wrong side of a flip after Mateos’ ace-queen paired up on the runout to best Ketzer’s pocket eights. Ketzer’s departure marked the start of the money bubble and play was expected to slow down. This was not the case, as Sirzat Hissou followed Ketzer out the door the following hand. Hissou was all in preflop with Big Slick but could not leapfrog Dvoress’ pocket queens.

Another fresh face on Day 2 was Justin Saliba and he squeaked into the money.

After calling incorrectly for his tournament life on the river against Mateos, he was the player to take home the min-cash. It was a lovely day’s work for Saliba, who netted a €40,000 profit thanks to his four hours on the felt.

Steve O’Dwyer was next to go and Mateos was again the eliminator. His pocket sixes flopped a full house to see off the Irishman. It was O’Dwyer’s third cash at EPT Paris as he racked up a seventh-place finish in the €50,000 Super High Roller for €155,100, which was then followed by a €134,900 result a few days later in another €25,000 buy-in event.

Four-handed play lasted a while, with Jean-Noel Thorel and Chidwick, who also bought in on Day 2, finding double-ups through Mateos and Dvoress, respectively. Chidwick then won several pots from Thorel and doubled through Mateos to put him second in the chip counts.

Dvoress’ stack began to dwindle and he bowed out in third place. He lost a flip to Thorel to leave himself short-stacked and then was ousted after his jack-ten fell to Chidwick’s ace-nine.

Chidwick then matched Mateos’ stack after doubling through the Spaniard. Stacks remained as they were for quite some time as chips were traded back and forth. However, Thorel’s run halted when Chidwick rivered the nut flush against his flopped pair.

Chidwick entered heads-up with the chip lead, which then changed hands several times. Chidwick then had one hand on the victory after laying a perfectly timed trap with pocket jacks. Shortly after, Mateos was all in with pocket fives and was up against the Englishman’s nine-seven. Mateos was set for another double until Chidwick paired up on the river to seal his second victory of EPT Paris.

This concludes PokerNews’ coverage of the €25,000 No Limit Hold’em III but be sure to check out the €10,300 High Roller finale.

Editor & Live Reporter

Calum has been a part of the PokerNews team since September 2021 after working in the UK energy sector. He played his first hand of poker in 2017 and immediately fell in love with the game. Calum’s proudest poker achievement is winning the only tournament he has ever played in Las Vegas, the prestigious $60 Flamingo evening event.

The third and final day of the €10,300 High Roller at PokerStars European Poker Tour Paris finally wrapped up after 13-plus hours of play in an event that required last-minute structure adjustments to finish on time. Portugal’s Diogo Coelho was the one left standing at the end of it all to take home the trophy and €810,500 after defeating Russia’s Aleksandr Shevliakov in a brief heads-up battle.

Despite being a High Roller event, the tournament managed to attract a massive field of 431 runners to generate a prize pool of €4,137,600. The field included many of the high-stakes regulars like Timothy Adams (23rd – €32,900) and Tom-Aksel Bedell (15th – €50,000), as well as plenty of up-and-coming players looking for their first major score.

One of those up-and-comers was Coelho, a 27-year-old who has been playing professionally for five years but had just $75,304 in live tournament earnings before binking more than ten times that.

“I’m feeling well. Very hyped in the moment,” Coelho told PokerNews in a winner’s interview. “It’s amazing. I’ve never won a prize like that before, so for me it’s everything.”

EPT Paris €10,300 High Roller Final Table Results

The final table included a star in 2014 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Martin Jacobson (7th – €126,500) and fellow Scandinavians Christian Pedersen (8th – €103,700) and Toni Kaukua (3rd – €361,300).

Coelho, who is primarily an online grinder, acknowledged the final table had many “good players who usually play more live poker than me” and “probably feel more comfortable than me” on the live felt.

“But I don’t think they have a lot of edge on me because of that,” he said. “I think it was a fun tournament, a fun final table. A good vibe for almost everyone.”

Day 3 Action

It was shaping to be a long day from the beginning when 44 players returned on Day 3 for some deep-stacked poker across 60-minute levels.

It took several hours to reach the final three tables after the eliminations of 2022 GPI Player of the Year Stephen Song (39th – €21,600), recent PCA $50,000 7-Handed champion Conor Beresford (31st – €24,900) and bracelet winner Antoine Vranken (25th – €28,600).

Several players fell to make way for the final two tables, including Jun Obara, who bowed out in 20th place when he called down Coelho with just ace-high before getting the bad news as Coelho had flopped trips.

Other players to fall ahead of the final table include David Miscikowski and Rui Ferreira before the Balenciaga-sporting Fahredin Mustafov bowed out in tenth place as his nines couldn’t survive a flip against Coelho’s suited ace-queen. Ace-queen was also that hand that doomed Vlada Stojanovic in ninth place when his king-jack couldn’t pull ahead in a heads-up pot against Shevliakov.

Next out was Christian Pederson, who suffered a tough beat as his kings were cracked by the ace-deuce of Kaukua in a pivotal hand that propelled Kaukua to his deep run.

Jacobson entered the final table as a short stack but managed to ladder and double up before falling in seventh to Coelho. The Swede who famously won $10 million in the 2014 World Series after running up a short stack had to settle for €126,500 this time around.

Kaukua had the chip lead and was pushing his opponents around for most of the final table until losing a critical flip to give Coelho the lead and to take the role of the short stack.

“It’s a crucial pot,” Coelho recalled. This pot, If I lose, I’m out of the tournament. If I win, I have 70% of the chips in play. So it’s a very important flip.”

The talkative Finn managed to ladder a bit before getting it in with ace-king to dominate the ace-nine of Coelho. Unfortunately, a runner-runner flush sent Kaukua packing and set Coelho up to have a big heads-up chip lead.

Heads-up play lasted for around a half hour as Shevliakov managed to stay afloat with less than 15 big blinds but could never get anything going.

In the final hand, Coelho open-jammed with ace-eight and Shevliakov called off with queen-seven. An ace-high flop all but sealed it and Shevliakov failed to improve to go out as the runner-up.

As soon as the river card hit, Coelho’s rail of Portuguese grinders, including Daniel Custodio and 11th-place finisher Ferreira, both of whom stuck around for a winner’s photo, erupted in celebration as their friend locked up his biggest score.

That wraps up the PokerNews live reporting team’s coverage of €10,300 High Roller on the final day of the inaugural EPT Paris stop. Check out the EPT Paris hub to see coverage of other events here in France’s capital.

Former Main Event champion Noel Furlong might have pocketed $1,000,000 for his victory in 1999, but by the time he passed away in June 2021, he had amassed a whole lot more.

A recent article has laid bare the estate of the former World Champion, with over €56 million ($59.5 million) left behind to his family.

The figure is so vast that were it all to have come from poker, he would sit second in the all-time money list, trailing only Justin Bonomo. But as you’ll find out, Furlong enjoyed much success away from the poker tables.

Furlong’s Poker Career

Furlong’s death at the age of 83 was met by an outpouring of grief from those within the poker community who knew him. 16-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who won the WSOP Main Event ten years before Furlong, called him one of the most successful businessmen in Ireland who handled himself “with class and always a smile.”

Meanwhile, the WSOP itself said in a statement that he was a “worthy champion” who helped put the ‘World’ in World Series of Poker.

Furlong was introduced to poker by chance while walking his dogs. In a story told by Irish poker legend Padraig Parkinson, Furlong bumped into a fellow poker player while out one night who encouraged him to come and battle against some “top Americans” who were in town to play poker.

Those “top Americans” were Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Puggy Pearson and Stu Ungar — not bad company!

“So he brought his dogs home, came back,” said Parkinson. “And a couple of hours later he was playing heads up with Puggy Pearson and he’s winning $6,000. It was the funniest thing. So that was Noel hooked.”

By the time Furlong made it to the 1999 WSOP Main Event final table, he was joined by Parkinson and another Irishman in the shape of George McKeever. That year’s final table is often remembered as one of the toughest in WSOP Main Event history. From a field of 393, the final table featured eventual runner-up Alan Goehring, Poker Hall of Famer Erik Seidel and Huck Seed, who had won the tournament three years earlier.

Furlong had already made a name for himself in the poker world by winning the Irish Poker Open in 1987 and 1989, but this result was the largest of his poker career, coming out on top for the $1,000,000 payday.

Win Your €1M Gtd Irish Open Main Event Package at PokerStars Today

Carpets and Racing

So where did the rest of the Irishman’s fortune come from? Almost two decades before his Main Event win, Furlong founded ‘Furlong Flooring‘ a leading manufacturer of carpets and other flooring products. The company flourished, mainly due to Furlong’s concentrated efforts in the late 1980s.

During this time, Furlong was also heavily involved in the horse racing industry as a racehorse trainer and gambler. His most famous bets came in 1991, when he won £2,500,000 in the space of a couple of months.

His first was a 33/1 (+3300) longshot in Ireland, before following that up with a £300,000 bet on his horse Destriero at odds of 6/1 (+600) to win the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival.

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European Executive Editor

Will Shillibier is based in the United Kingdom. He started working for PokerNews as a freelance live reporter in 2015 and joined the full-time staff in 2019.

He graduated from the University of Kent in 2017 with a B.A. in German, and then studied for a NCTJ Diploma in Sports Journalism at Sportsbeat in Manchester.