The weekend saw the conclusion of the GBP 5,300 buy-in Party Poker Live Millions Dawn Til Dusk main event, with Argentinian outsider Maria Lampropulos taking the honours and the GBP 1 million main prize in an exciting finish, watched by boyfriend and coach Ivan Luca.
The mixed online and live event attracted 8,500 entries, creating a prize pool well over guarantee at GBP 6,017,395 and ensuring that the top 253 players cashed.
The eight-player final table included two women, and the accomplished UK professional Stephen Chidwick, whom Lampropulos confessed she feared the most. However in the event, Chidwick only placed sixth.
Lampropulos’s heads up after five hours of final table action was against an ascendant and confident young player from Doncaster, Jacob Mulhern, who declined to discuss a chop before the heads up began.
That may have been an over confident mistake, because although he started out by increasing his lead and appeared to be dominating Lampropulos, the Argentinian player kept her head.
She caught her opponent out in at least two big bluffs which gave her a 2 to 1 lead that she very ably leveraged that into a resounding win after just 40 minutes of heads up action.
Her 24-year-old opponent went home with a runner up prize of GBP 650,000, plus GBP 100,000 for being the last man standing for all Caribbean Poker Party players that bagged up chips in Punta Cana last November.
Other final table cashes included:
Jeremy Pantin GBP 450,000
Mateusz Rypulak GBP 320,000
Jon Spinks GBP 220,000
Stephen Chidwick GBP 150,000
Katie Swift GBP 100,000
Neel Murthy GBP 72,395