Tom Hall Wins 888Live London Main Event for £79k

Following 12 days of action, the 888Live Poker Festival London reached its climax at the end of last week with the conclusion of its £1,100 Main Event. A total of 427 players entered the tournament to create a prize pool of £427,730 ($564,809), with Tom Hall managing to best the field after three days, including Ning Lu heads-up, to claim the title, and a first place prize of £78,888 ($104,170).
The 28-year-old UK pro has now won three tournaments over the space of just one year, starting in December 2016 when he took down the €2,200 EPT Prague High Roller for €194,357 ($205,204), followed in July by the £220 DTD Nottingham for £20,000 ($26,219). After his latest victory, Hall now pushes his career earnings to $1,848,625, and heaping praise on his performance, the UK’s online poker legend Chris Moorman stated:
“Tom has been one of the most consistent hard-working grinders in the UK for a while now. It was great to see him take down the 888Live Festival London Main Event and I enjoyed commentating on the Final Table and watching his play.”
Tom Hall entered the final table in pole position on a 4.06m stack, while Ning Lu had the second to lowest stack with just 583,000 in chips. However, it was these two players who would eventually meet in the heads-up phase of the event, by which stage Lu held the advantage with almost twice the chips of his opponent. Nevertheless, Lu agreed a deal in which he would receive £72,142 to Hall’s £70,000, with an extra £8,888 and the trophy left over for the ultimate winner.
A marathon three-hour final battle then ensued, at the end of which a short-stacked Lu pushed all-in preflop holding Q-10, resulting in Hall making the call with A-5. With the board subsequently running out 2-Q-A-3-4, Tom Hall recorded another famous victory, whilst validating once more his decision to drop out of Nottingham Trent University to pursue a career playing poker.
“I took maths but failed my end of year exams. So I restarted. This time I studied maths and computing. But when I failed again, I knew university wasn’t for me and dropped out. I had begun to play online poker and was getting good results. Since then it has become my life and I absolutely love the game,” commented Hall.
Final Table Results:
1: Tom Hall £78,888
2: Ning Lu £72,142
3: Pol Hernandez £39,945
4: Paul Scipioni £29,590
5: Daniel Stanway £22,190
6: Charles Akadiri £17,750
7: Paul Nugent £14,795
8: Shao Zhen £11,835
9: Pascal Pflock £8,875