The British Poker Series BPS200 Main Event begins in London today, September 9, with £100,000 guaranteed at Genting Casino Stratford.
Seven regular starting flights plus Turbo and Hyper opportunities will give players multiple routes into Sunday’s final, with the £235 Main Event forming the centrepiece of a week of live poker in the capital.
BPS200 London Starts Today
The first cards of the Main Event are scheduled to be dealt at 6:15pm on Wednesday, with Day 1A offering players a 25,000 starting stack and an initial 25-minute clock before levels increase to 30 minutes.
Entry costs £235, consisting of a £200 tournament buy-in and £35 fee. A £40 Super Satellite at 1:15pm today guarantees ten Main Event seats.
The BPS200 arrives during an increasingly busy period for UK poker, just days after the conclusion of the GUKPT Luton Main Event.
That tournament produced a historic result when Renee Xie became the first woman to win a GUKPT Main Event, defeating a 396-entry field for £35,435.
Now attention moves from Luton to London.
BPS200 London Main Event Schedule
The British Poker Series has built plenty of flexibility into the BPS200 structure. Two flights run on Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the final two opportunities arrive on Sunday morning and afternoon.
| Date | Time | Flight |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, September 9 | 6:15pm | Day 1A Early Bird |
| Thursday, September 10 | 1:15pm | Day 1B |
| Thursday, September 10 | 7:15pm | Day 1C |
| Friday, September 11 | 1:15pm | Day 1D |
| Friday, September 11 | 7:15pm | Day 1E |
| Saturday, September 12 | 1:15pm | Day 1F |
| Saturday, September 12 | 7:15pm | Day 1G |
| Sunday, September 13 | 10:15am | Day 1 Turbo |
| Sunday, September 13 | 1:30pm | Day 1 Hyper |
| Sunday, September 13 | 4:30pm | Day 2 / Final |
Players entering the standard flights receive 25,000 chips, with the majority using 30-minute levels. The Sunday Turbo cuts the clock to 15 minutes, while the final Hyper flight uses 10-minute levels before the remaining players come together for the final at 4:30pm.
The structure also allows players entering multiple flights to carry their largest qualifying stack forward.
More Than Just the £100,000 Main Event
BPS200 is part of a festival running at Genting Casino Stratford from September 7 to 13.
The first trophy event arrived on Tuesday evening with the £160 BPS Big 10K. Thursday adds a £160 Ladies event carrying a £3,000 guarantee alongside two BPS200 starting flights.
It continues a particularly active spell for live poker in Britain.
London recently provided another unusual poker story when a corporate poker tournament produced one of the year’s more distinctive trophies. Meanwhile, established tours and smaller regional events continue to give British players alternatives to travelling overseas for major tournament poker.
The BPS200 sits towards the accessible end of that spectrum.
Its £235 entry is considerably below the four-figure buy-ins associated with many international Main Events, while the £100,000 guarantee still gives recreational and regular tournament players a substantial prize pool to chase.
British Live Poker Has a Busy September Ahead
The BPS200 is not the end of the month’s live poker schedule in Britain.
GUKPT moves to Leeds later in September, where its next festival runs from September 24 to October 4. The £1,000 GUKPT Leeds Main Event will carry a £200,000 guarantee as the tour continues its 20th season.
The British Poker Series itself has bigger plans immediately afterwards. Its BPS Championship is scheduled to run from September 28 to October 11, with more than £350,000 guaranteed across two weeks of tournaments.
There is also another BPS200 London stop scheduled for November 25 to 29, again with £100,000 guaranteed.
For now, however, the focus is on Stratford.
By Sunday evening, one player should have turned a £235 entry into the latest British Poker Series Main Event title.
