William Hill Poker Grand Prix

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The William Hill Poker Grand Prix is a poker tournament sponsored by William Hill plc shown on Sky Sports. It features a number of professional and amateur poker players competing against each other. There have been two tournaments to date, broadcast in 2006 and 2007.

The first tournament entry fee was £6,000 (≈$10,500.) An additional £114,000 (≈$200,000.) was added to the prize pool by William Hill. A limited number of entrants qualified through online satellite tournaments.

Jesse May commentates the broadcasts on Sky Sports, with alternating support from Andrew Black and Lucy Rokach.

Format

Seven preliminary matches are played, with the winner of each going through to the Grand Final. The second-place finisher goes through to a semi-final round, the winner of which also advances to the Grand Final, which will feature the 7 heat winners and the semi-final winner.

2006 Tournament

Date

Episode

Winner

Runner-Up

Other Players

17-Jan-2006

Heat 1

Phil Laak

John Falconer
  • Steve Jelinek
  • Juha Helppi
  • Joe Grech
  • Dave Colclough
  • George Harle
  • Nick Gibson

24-Jan-2006

Heat 2

Pascal Perrault

Roy Brindley
  • Roland De Wolfe
  • Tony G
  • Donnacha O'Dea
  • Andrew Tracey
  • Voitto Rintala
  • Scotty Nguyen

31-Jan-2006

Heat 3

Liam Flood

Peter Costa
  • Charalambos "Bambos" Xanthos
  • Ian Bradley
  • Antonio Esfandiari
  • Xuyen Pham
  • John Shipley
  • Rob Yong

7-Feb-2006

Heat 4

Ram Vaswani

Iwan Jones
  • Julian Thew
  • Andrew Black
  • Simon Wolf
  • Luke Smith
  • Joe Beevers
  • John Kabbaj

14-Feb-2006

Heat 5

Ken Lennaárd

Ben Roberts
  • Jeff Duvall
  • Surinder Sunar
  • Allan McLean
  • Tony Bloom
  • Neil Channing
  • Achilleas Kallakis

21-Feb-2006

Heat 6

Greg Hill

Barny Boatman
  • Christer Johansson
  • Robert Cooper
  • Marc Goodwin
  • Brian Wilson
  • Jani Sointula
  • Patrik Antonius

28-Feb-2006

Heat 7

Sean Murphy

Willie Tann
  • Steve Vladar
  • Carmy Banin
  • Stuart Nash
  • Donato Di Bellonia
  • Roy Silvester
  • Peter Gunnarson

7-Mar-2006

Semi-final

Roy Brindley

Barny Boatman
  • Peter Costa
  • Iwan Jones
  • John Falconer
  • Ben Roberts
  • Willie Tann

14-Mar-2006

Grand final

Phil Laak
(£150,000)

Ram Vaswani
(£95,000)
  • Roy Brindley (£65,000)
  • Pascal Perrault (£45,000)
  • Ken Lennaárd (£35,000)
  • Sean Murphy (£25,000)
  • Liam Flood (£20,000)
  • Greg Hill (£15,000)

2007 Tournament

Date

Episode

Winner

Runner-Up

Other Players

March 2007

Grand final

Martin Wendt
(£180,000)

Wayne Hutchins
(£100,000)
  • Antonio Esfandiari (£70,000)
  • Ben Grundy (£50,000)
  • Johnny Lodden (£35,000)
  • Bo Sehlstedt (£25,000)
  • Jeff Lisandro (£20,000)
  • Ken Lennaard (£15,000)

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