Day 1A from the GUKPT at The Victoria Casino, London.

With 161 players, and £496,500 in the pot, this was going to be a very busy day as Day 1A got underway at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino in London.

Steadily the field was being whittled down and at 19.30 Paul (Action) Jackson was all in with A-K. Peter Charalambos called and showed A-Q. The board did not favour Jackson as two Queens came down and the Midlands pro’ was out.

John Kabbaj sat with a healthy stack of 61k for a long time and managed to increase that further to just over 70k, mid-way through the evening, with a tournament average of just 21k.

Just after midnight 51 players remained as TD Ian Bryan told the dealers to stop dealing. The 2007 winner of this event Leo Kam was to pick a card from the deck to determine how many hands were left. Kam picked out a 6, giving players just 6 hands left to play!

With 5 hands left, Dave Colclough pushed all in. One player calls and turns over A-8, Colclough turns over 6-5. The poker Gods smiled on Colclough as he hits a 5 on the turn and doubles through to 16k with just 4 hands remaining.

With 2 hands remaining, Dave Lloyd pushes all-in for his tournament life. Dave Colclough called and showed A-A. Lloyd shook his head and turned over 3-3. The board didn’t help Lloyd as Colclough worked his chip stack up to 33k.

Colclough explained in an interview afterwards that he found it to be a very hard day and a real grind from the start. John Kabbaj commented that he’d had a rush early doors that had settled down and that he had lost one big hand and his stack was now down to 41k where as Tim Flanders said that he had been card dead all day. “I never found good cards, just good situations” said Flanders.

Day 1B starts at 14.00GMT today and poker legend Freddy Deeb will be gracing the tables along with Walsall winner Sunny Chattha who won his seat to the event in a satellite on Wednesday evening.