Trickett Secures Top Ten Finish Among Poker’s Elite

Following the success of British players in Las Vegas this year, it is now the case that any performance less than a bracelet win barely attracts notice. The World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2010 has proved extremely fruitful for UK players, with James Dempsey, Praz Bansi, Mike Ellis, Richard Ashby and Steve Jelinek all winning bracelets in what is Britain’s most successful year at the annual event. In fact, no other nation besides the US has won more bracelets at the WSOP in a single year. As Britain awaits its next bracelet, some huge performances have gone largely unnoticed.

James Akenhead, Barny Boatman and Neil Channing played superb poker to reach day 2 of Event 55, which is still in progress, whilst Martins Adeniya finished a strong thirteenth in Event 52 for $58,699. Event 52, a no-limit Hold’em six-handed tournament with a buy-in of $25,000 featured a prize pool of $4,536,250 and received 191 entries. Whilst Adeniya’s exploits were hugely impressive, it was fellow Brit, Sam Trickett, who finished within sight of a bracelet win. Trickett, of Retford Nottingham, enjoyed an impressive run of form from day one of event 52 to finish in seventh position for $141,168.

En route to seventh place, Trickett finished above poker legends Daniel Negreanu, Carlos Mortensen and Justin Bonomo but came up short to Dan Kelly, Shawn Buchanan, Frank Kassela, Jason Somerville, Mikael Thuritz and Eugene Katchalov, all of North America. Trickett is a respected player at many UK poker tournaments, which have experienced a surge in UK online poker players during the WSOP. Many professional online players have sought to take advantage of a weakened field this summer as Britain’s top tournament players have embarked on their crusades in Las Vegas. Tournament fields have been further diluted by the football World Cup, which is also thought to have reduced the number of people playing online.