Almost 20 Years in the Making: Adam Wilkinson Finally Wins a GUKPT Main Event

Back in February 2007, Adam Wilkinson finished 11th from 360 entrants in the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) Walsall Main Event. It was only the second-ever Main Event that the GUKPT had run. Wilkinson has become a permanent fixture in the almost 200 GUKPTs that have since followed, but despite racking up plenty of wins in side events, a Main Event title eluded him.

Wilkinson has got that particular monkey off his back by taking down the £1,250 GUKPT Blackpool Main Event. His previous deepest GUKPT Main Event run was a seventh place finish in the Newcastle Main Event in July 2007. Now he has a Main Event title, winner’s trophy, and a £55,035 score, plus an extra £5,504 thanks to buying into this tournament via his GGPoker account.

“I ran like God,” Wilkinson told Phil “The Tower” Heald shortly after becoming the GUKPT Blackpool Main Event champion. “It doesn’t happen often, but I ran really well.”

Wilkinson joked that he might retire from poker now that he has a GUKPT Main Event win under his belt, stating that he once parred nine holes of golf and never played the game again.

£1,250 GUKPT Blackpool Main Event Final Table Results

The £1,250 buy-in GUKPT Blackpool Main Event drew in a crowd of 190 entrants, resulting in the top 25 finishers winning a share of the £237,500 prize pool.

John Bousfield, Matthew Davenport, Jamie Dale, Justin Devonport, Fraser Bellamy, Yucel Eminoglu, and final table bubble boy David Docherty were among the familiar names who added another cash to their Hendon Mob profiles.

The nine-handed final table housed more than the usual number of seasoned poker veterans. Peter Charalambous was one of them, although his time on the live stream was limited because he bowed out in ninth. Charalambous first cashed in a live event in 2005 and broke through $1 million in earnings earlier this year.

Trevor Reardon, another player who cashed during the inaugural GUKPT season in 2007, fell in eighth. Reardon flopped trip kings and got his chips in on the river, only to discover that Christopher Wood had also flopped trips but filled up with the ten on the river.

Seventh place went to local player Benjamin Hill after he got his last 15 big blinds into the middle while holding pocket queens against the ace-nine of Jon “Skalie” Kalmar. The latter improved to a flush, and Hill was sent to the cashier’s desk.

A career-best £8,880 found its way to Chris Cox shortly after he came unstuck in sixth. Cox’s previous largest haul weighed in at £3,635, his reward for a runner-up finish in a £110 side event during UKIPT Bristol in 2012.

The first five-figure prize of the tournament went to Kalmar, who you may recall finished fifth in the 2007 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event for $1,255,069. Kalmar committed his 20 big blind stack with ace-king, which was racing against Wilkinson’s pocket eights. The hot-running “Wilko” improved to a full house, and the Main Event was suddenly down to only four runners.

Wood finished fifth in this very tournament in 2017, and fell one place deeper nine years later. Wood lost a chunk of his stack before jamming for 12 big blinds with pocket nines, and being called by Michael Whitehead holding pocket fours and Chris Guertin holding ace-king. Whitehead made a set of fours, and Wood was sent packing.

After losing that last hand but not his entire stack, Guertin was the next player to be eliminated. He made second pair and shoved his short stack only to discover Wilkinson had made top pair. Wilkinson’s hand held, and the 2026 GUKPT Blackpool Main Event was heads up.

Wilkinson and Whitehead struck a deal that slightly lessened the pay jumps despite Wilkinson holding a two-to-one chip lead; the deal left £9,747 to play for. Whitehead was guaranteed his largest-ever live score regardless of where he finished. The fact he qualified online at Grosvenor Poker for only £5 meant he would enjoy a blockbuster Return On Investment (ROI).

Whitehead saw his stack dwindle but then doubled up after he flopped a set of nines to crack Wilkinson’s pocket jacks. Wilkinson ground down his opponent again and was four-to-one ahead at the time of the final hand.

The final hand saw Whitehead move all-in with ace-queen on a queen-high flop showing two diamonds. Wilkinson called with eight-four of diamonds. The turn was a black king, but the river was the nine of diamonds, eliminating Whitehead in second place, and finally crowning Wilkinson a GUKPT Main Event champion.

The GUKPT Grand Final Brings the Curtain Down on 2026

Players from far and wide will descend on the Grosvenor Victoria in London from November 19-29 when the 2026 GUKPT Grand Final is in town. The showpiece event of the bustling schedule is the £2,000 GUKPT Main Event, which carries a £500,000 guarantee.

Alan Stearn is the reigning champion. He took home £125,645 of the £569,640 prize pool last November. Others who have taken down the GUKPT Main Event include former football star Tony Cascarino, Fabian Quoss, Sam Grafton, and Paul Vas Nunes. Benjamin Winsor is the only player to have won the tournament twice, doing so in 2015 and again in 2019.

Satellites for the 2026 GUKT Grand Final Main Event are available online at Grosvenor Poker and GGPoker.

Matthew Pitt hails from Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, and has worked in the poker industry since 2008, and worked for PokerNews since 2010. In September 2010, he became the editor of PokerNews. Matthew stepped away from live reporting duties in 2015, and now concentrates on his role of Senior Editor for the PokerNews.