Pocket Kings Twice in Heads-Up Hands Niall Campbell GUKPT Grand Final Title
Table Of Contents
In October, a one-outer from Vitalijs Polukejevs dashed Niall Campbell's hopes of victory in the 2024 IPO Main Event. Despite the heartbreak, Campbell didn't dwell on the loss for long. Just weeks later, he reinvested a small portion of his €28,900 winnings to journey from Ireland to the United Kingdom and enter the GUKPT Grand Final Main Event. The decision paid off handsomely, as Campbell topped a 395-entry field to secure the lion's share of the ￡415,620 prize pool.
The final showdown pitted Campbell against UK poker stalwart Kuljinder Sidhu, who seemed destined to claim the ￡89,000 first-place prize. However, a dramatic shift in momentum in the final showdown saw Campbell reverse his fortunes, capturing his first major title and redemption after his narrow miss on home turf.
GUKPT Grand Final Main Event Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Niall Campbell | ￡89,000 |
| 2 | Kuljinder Sidhu | ￡66,200 |
| 3 | Phillip Corion | ￡45,200 |
| 4 | Timothy Chung | ￡29,520 |
| 5 | Linda Nguyen | ￡19,950 |
| 6 | Qing Zheng | ￡14,130 |
| 7 | Tarique Imam | ￡11,220 |
| 8 | Oliver Caplan | ￡9,760 |
| 9 | Brandon Harris | ￡8,300 |
Final Day Action
Qing Zheng entered the finale as the chip leader, and was being hunted down by 16 other players. Carl Spicer, Thomas Clack, and Ben Miller ran into premium hands as the field began to edge closer to the final table. The departures of Sunny Mistri, Rob Douras and Ali Abdulzahra then set up the FT bubble, which burst when Day 1a chip leader Linda Nguyen flopped a set of deuces to oust Zipan Huang.
Brandon Harris thought a sizeable pot was heading his way when he turned a straight on Timothy Chung, but the river improved the latter to a flush and the chips piled in to send Harris to the wrong side of the rail in ninth place. Oliver Kaplan and his cowboys were three-outered by Sidhu's Big Slick a few orbits later as the Grand Final Main Event reached its last seven players.
Chung banked another final table elimination, downing Tarique Imam in a preflop race to keep in touch with leaders Sidhu and Phillip Corion. Nguyen and Campbell weren't too far off the pace. However, Zheng floundered with a sub-ten big blind stack and made his way to the payout desk in sixth after his queen-nine ran into Sidhu's ace-king.
Remarkably, Sidhu continued to find big hands as he pulled away from the remaining pack and was again dealt ace-king. Hovering around 11 big blinds, Nguyen moved in with ace-deuce but failed to improve on the runout as the quest for the first-ever female GUKPT Main Event champion would have to wait until at least 2025.
Sidhu's onslaught raged on with a blind-on-blind battle that ended Chung's deep run, but Campbell made it a fair fight after he eliminated Corion to bring the stacks level for his heads-up showdown with the red-hot Sidhu.
Sidhu was, by far and away, the more experienced player, and he closed out a GUKPT Main Event earlier in his career. This was a setting he was very comfortable in, but momentum and the deck shifted heavily in Campbell's favor.
Both players started heads-up with 50 big blinds, but the battle ended in less than ten hands. Sidhu took the first pot to move back on top before a preflop three-bet gave Campbell a small boost. On the third hand, Sidhu ran ace-ten suited into pocket kings; this time, there was no saving grace. A few hands later, Campbell looked down at pocket kings once more and snap-called when Sidhu shipped in his last 12 big blinds with queen-jack. Sidhu flopped a gutshot and turned a pair but the river was a brick to hand Campbell the 2024 GUKPT Grand Final Main Event title.
