The PartyPoker.com World Open IV sheduled for London, England between 25th April and 2nd May 2008 will feature a top class field led by ‘Ambassador of Poker’ Mike Sexton, the company announced this week. Subsidiary PartyBets.com is offering odds on the event and has named the most recent Irish Open winner Neil Channing the 16/1 favourite.
“Mike Sexton is a fantastic addition to the World Open line-up but he features in a heat that also includes Barny Boatman, Marc Goodwin, Jan Peter Jachtmann and Juha Helppi so he will have his work cut out,” a company spokesman said.
Other familiar faces to look out for this year include recent PartyPoker.com European Open IV winner Nick Slade, Theo Jorgensen, Ian Frazer, Ross Boatman, Marty Smyth, Roberto Romanello, Jon Kalmar, Jon Magill, Thomas Bihl, Roy Brindley, Surinder Sunar, John Tabatabai, Pippa Flanders and Liam Flood.
Matchroom Sport has organised the event, which will be broadcast on Channel 5 in the UK later this year and distributed internationally.
The 72 runner $8 000 buy-in event features a first prize of $250 000 from a total prize pool of $576 000. Last year, 45-year-old former Sidcup betting shop owner Anthony Hardy triumphed over a final table that also featured Ian Cox, Ram Vaswani, David Rudling, Ian Frazer and eventual runner-up Ian Woodley. The winner in 2006 was Pippa Flanders while in 2005 Lee Nelson won the inaugural event.
The winner of each of the 12 heats will progress to the semi-final stage, and, for the first time in the event’s history all is not lost for the runners-up on the table as they will battle it out for the remaining two semi-final spots in “last chance” turbo heats.