Sam Grafton Wins GUKPT Grand Final For £102k

Sam “Squid” Grafton has just won the  Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) Grand Final, after defeating a field of 137 players over three days to lift the title, and collect the £102,700 ($165,162) first place prize. After his remarkable victory at the London Victoria Casino, the UK pro now takes his live tournament winnings to $287,958 to go with his $1,652,395 won online under the screen name “The Squid.”
The £2,500 buy-in tournament attracted a whole slew of pros to the event to create a prize pool worth £342,500. These included the likes of Neil Channing, James Akenhead, Sam Razavi,  Toby Lewis, Stuart Rutter and Michael Tureniec, none of whom made it into the top 13 only paying spots.
As the final table of nine got underway, a short-stacked Chris Brammer (A-J) became its first casualty in 9th after faltering against the 10-9 of  Matt Moss. He was followed soon after by Sandeep Khosa (J-J) in 8th, who lost a coin-flip against Peter Charalambous holding K-Q.
A severely short Dave Maudlin (9-7) on the big blind then called Jon Spinks (Q-7) to exit in 7th, while 6th spot went to George Hassabis (7h-5h) who got into a raising war against Peter Charalambous (A-10) on a 9h-Ad-3h flop, but with an innocuous 8d and 4s landing on the turn and river.
Next, Jon Spinks (K-J) lost his battle of the blinds against Matt Moss (A-8) to crash out in 5th, but Moss’ (A-A) celebrations were short lived as Sam Grafton (Q-Q) cracked his pocket aces to dispatch him to the rail in 4th.
Eventually, Charalambous eliminated Victor Ilyukhin in 3rd to take a 3 to 1 chip lead against Grafton into the heads-up phase of the competition.  After quickly doubling up, Sam Grafton then took the lead before the last hand was played with Charalambous holding pocket tens to his opponent’s As-4s. Subsequently, the board rolled out Ks-Jd-3s-Qh-Qs to relegate Charalambous to a runner-up finish worth £72,800, while Sam Grafton was crowned the 2012 GUKPT Grand Final champion.
The final table payouts were as follows:
1 Sam Grafton     £102,700
2 Peter Charalambous £72,800
3 Victor Ilyukhin £45,400
4 Matt Moss     £28,250
5 Jon Spinks     £22,250
6 George Hassabis £17,100
7 Dave Maudlin     £13,700
8 Sandeep Khosa £10,300
9 Chris Brammer £7,700