Richard Harris Wins the WPT500 UK For £150,000

Richard Harris is £150,000 richer than he was a few days ago thanks to the Welshman outlasting 1,615 other players in the £1 million guaranteed 2015 World Poker Tour WPT500 UK at Dusk Till Dawn.

Place	Player	Prize
1	Richard Harris	£150,000
2	Yani Yanev	£90,0000
3	Chin Chai Koh	£60,000
4	Florian Duta	£37,500
5	Nathan Gallighan	£26,500
6	Ben Winsor	£20,000
7	Sacha Brookes	£15,000
8	Daniele Carminetti	£11,500
9	Alex Goulder	£9,000

Harris went into the nine-handed final table with 20% of the chips in play, quite the stark contrant to Alex Goulder who sat down with only a handful of big blinds – and a small handful at that. The last of Goulder’s chips went into the middle of the felt with him holding a pair of queens. He was called by Floria Duta and his ace-jack. A jack on the flop was followed by aces on both the turn and river to leave only eight players in contention for the title.

Goulder’s set hadn’t even gone cold when Daniele Carminetti followed him to the rail in eighth place. Carminetti committed his 15-big bling stack with and was looked up by Chin Chai Ko – who is affectionately known as Chinese Frankie – and his . A final board reading was enough to send Carminetti to the showers.

Twenty minutes after that last hand Sacha Brookes bust. Brookes pushed all-in with pocket fours and ran into Ko’s higher pair of fives. The five community cards failed to produce any drama and Brookes was gone.

Sixth place went to Ben Winsor who can count himself unlucky not to have gone all the way and won the tournament. Florian Duta opened to 550,000 and Winsor responded with an all-in three-bet of 3.1 million. Duta called with king-jack and was in bad shape against Winsor’s dominating king-queen. Winsor remained ahead until the river where a jack appeared to send him to the cashier’s desk to collect sixth place money of £20,000.

The eliminations continued at an alarming pace with Nathan Gallighan the next to be eliminated. After losing most of his stack with to Harris’ , Gallighan lost the rest of his chips when his couldn’t get there versus Harris’ .

Fourth place and £37,500 went to the aforementioned Duta who decided the best way to play a pair of deuces with a 23 big blind stack was to move all-in with them from the button. However, Harris was lying in wait in the big blind with pocket tens. The tens remained true and Duta was gone.

A classic coinflip took care of the third place finisher, Ko, and awarded £60,000. A preflop raising war between Harris and Ko broke out that resulted in Ko being all-in with and racing against the of Harris. Five raggy community cards later and heads-up was set.

Harris held a 37 million to 11 million chip advantage over Yani Yanev and it didn’t take long to press home that advantage. On a flop reading , Harris bet 3.2 million and then called when Yanev pushed all-in for around 9.5 million. Yanev showed and Harris . The turn kept Harris’ jacks in front with the completing the board and crowning Harris as the 2015 WPT500 UK champion.