The Grosvenor UK Poker Tour returns to Blackpool on October 30 for a festival with a considerably longer history than most British live poker stops.
The 2026 visit will be the tour’s 21st to the seaside town, with a £250,000 guaranteed Main Event, a packed supporting schedule and the final staging of the Kav Cup.
Grosvenor advertises more than £500,000 in festival guarantees, but its published event-by-event figures actually total £610,000 across the 12 tournaments carrying a stated guarantee. For players who have followed the circuit since its Channel 4 days, Blackpool also brings an opportunity to revisit a Main Event roll of honour that stretches back to 2007.
GUKPT Blackpool 2026: Dates, Venue and Key Numbers
The live festival runs from October 30 through November 8 at Grosvenor Casino Blackpool on the South Promenade. A separate online closer extends the numbered tournament schedule through November 10, so those later dates should not be confused with the live Main Event finish.
- Venue: Grosvenor Casino Blackpool, South Promenade
- Live festival: October 30 to November 8, 2026
- Main Event: £1,250 buy-in, £250,000 guaranteed, November 5–8
- Mini Main: £250 buy-in, £100,000 guaranteed
- NLHE High Roller: £1,500 buy-in, £100,000 guaranteed
- Published festival guarantees: £610,000 across 12 guaranteed events
- Kav Cup: Final edition on Saturday, October 31, starting at noon
The Complete 2026 Blackpool Tournament Schedule
The Main Event accounts for £250,000 of the published guarantees, but there is considerable money allocated elsewhere. The Mini Main and no-limit hold’em High Roller each carry £100,000, while the GUKPT Cup adds a further £50,000.
| Dates (2026) | Tournament | Total buy-in | Guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 30 | Warm-Up | £125 | £15,000 |
| Oct 31 | Final Kav Cup | £60 | Not listed |
| Nov 1–4 | Mini Main | £250 | £100,000 |
| Nov 2 | Four-Card PLO | £200 | £10,000 |
| Nov 3–4 | PLO High Roller | £1,000 | £25,000 |
| Nov 4–5 | NLHE High Roller | £1,500 | £100,000 |
| Nov 4 | NLHE Turbo | £200 | £10,000 |
| Nov 5–8 | Main Event | £1,250 | £250,000 |
| Nov 5 | Deepstack | £150 | £10,000 |
| Nov 7–8 | GUKPT Cup | £550 | £50,000 |
| Nov 8 | Last Chance | £250 | £15,000 |
| Nov 8 | Closer | £200 | £10,000 |
| Nov 9–10 | Online Closer | £110 | £15,000 |
The figures above are the published total buy-ins, including tournament fees, rather than the amounts entering the prize pools. There is no listed guarantee for the Kav Cup. The two-day Online Closer falls after the live Blackpool festival and is included in the £610,000 aggregate.
Three Starting Flights for the £250,000 Main Event
The £1,250 Main Event opens at 1pm on Thursday, November 5, with its second regular flight starting at noon on Friday, November 6. A third flight, billed as Day 1C Turbo, begins at 9pm that Friday, ahead of Day 2 at noon on Saturday and the scheduled conclusion on Sunday, November 8.
The buy-in is split into £1,100 for the tournament and a £150 fee. Players start with 20,000 chips, and the standard structure lists 60-minute levels, providing a different proposition from the shorter side events elsewhere in the festival.
The Mini Main, High Rollers and PLO Events
The £250 Mini Main has several opening flights beginning on November 1, leading into its later stages on November 3 and 4. It has become one of the best-supported competitions on the Blackpool programme, having attracted 699 entries last year.
High-stakes players have a £1,500 no-limit hold’em High Roller on November 4–5 with £100,000 guaranteed, plus a £1,000 four-card PLO High Roller on November 3–4 offering £25,000. A £200 PLO event, the £550 GUKPT Cup and lower-priced turbo and deepstack tournaments mean the festival is not solely aimed at players entering the Main Event.
The Final Kav Cup: A Blackpool Poker Tradition Ends
Saturday, October 31 has an importance that goes beyond its £60 buy-in. The final Kav Cup is scheduled for noon, closing a charity tournament whose connection to Blackpool and the British poker community goes back more than a decade.
Who Was Derek “Kav” Kavanagh?
Derek Kavanagh was a popular figure on the UK live circuit, remembered as much for his humour and enthusiasm for other players as his results. Blackpool’s Grosvenor Casino was particularly significant to him because it was where he first played a live poker tournament and formed friendships that became a central part of his involvement in the game.
The Kav Cup was founded by Rick Gilby while Kavanagh was still alive, rather than being launched only after his death. In a 2016 interview, Kavanagh discussed continuing to travel and play tournament poker despite terminal lung cancer, and the third edition of the event was already being planned for early 2017. The tournament subsequently became a memorial and a lasting charity fundraiser.
Earlier editions helped causes including Carers Trust and children’s hospice Zoe’s Place. The event has now raised more than £84,000 in total, a figure that shows how a relatively small buy-in event can develop a meaningful life outside the tournament results page.
How the Final 2026 Kav Cup Works
The advertised buy-in is £40 plus £20, with the full £20 portion allocated to charity, and the schedule also lists a £40 add-on. The previous Blackpool edition drew 225 entries in 2025, when Adam Clark won the tournament for £3,940.
Reaching £100,000 in lifetime fundraising would require more than £16,000 beyond the reported total, so it is a challenging target for one last edition. The final tournament is nevertheless likely to attract interest from the many players who remember Kavanagh, have supported the Cup over the years or simply want to take part in its conclusion.
Twenty Years of GUKPT Blackpool History
The Grosvenor UK Poker Tour began in 2007, the same year it first visited Blackpool. The original tour events were televised on Channel 4, placing the British circuit in front of poker fans who had become familiar with tournament television during the game’s mid-2000s boom.
Ireland’s Paul Bracken won that inaugural Blackpool Main Event, beating Paul Gardener heads-up in a 353-entry field to collect £109,700. It remains the highest individual first-place prize in the recorded history of the Blackpool Main Event, narrowly ahead of Jamie Clossick’s £109,000 victory in 2022.
Blackpool was an annual stop for much of the tour’s early life, although the live event did not take place in 2020 because of the pandemic. The venue hosted two Main Events in both 2023 and 2024, explaining how the 2026 tournament becomes the 21st Blackpool visit despite the tour being in its 20th season.
Record Fields, Prize Pools and Historic Highs
Blackpool’s largest recorded Main Event field arrived in November 2022, when 543 entries generated a £597,300 prize pool. That followed another unusually busy edition in 2021, when Richard Horton defeated 532 opponents in a 533-entry event worth £574,580.
Across the 20 previous Blackpool Main Events listed below, the published figures amount to 6,083 tournament entries and just over £6.3 million in combined prize pools. These are cumulative event entries, not unique individuals, and the totals use the reported historical results rather than estimates for 2026.
Every Previous GUKPT Blackpool Main Event Winner
Several well-known names appear on the list, including Simon Deadman, Richard Trigg, Tom Middleton, Yiannis Liperis and Ludovic Geilich. Two Blackpool tournaments were held in both 2023 and 2024, while there was no corresponding live edition in 2020.
| Year / edition | Champion | Entries | First prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Paul Bracken | 353 | £109,700 |
| 2008 | Brian Clarke | 341 | £96,500 |
| 2009 | Priyan de Mel | 287 | £84,900 |
| 2010 | David Johnson | 246 | £67,750 |
| 2011 | Andrew Peters | 262 | £72,020 |
| 2012 | Simon Deadman | 173 | £49,290 |
| 2013 | Richard Trigg | 226 | £53,000 |
| 2014 | Justin Astley | 171 | £59,000 |
| 2015 | Jonny Gray | 275 | £69,050 |
| 2016 | Tom Middleton | 251 | £56,255 |
| 2017 | Daniel Corbett | 314 | £87,280 |
| 2018 | Yiannis Liperis | 304 | £84,250 |
| 2019 | Matthew Eardley | 367 | £84,550 |
| 2021 | Richard Horton | 533 | £94,150 |
| 2022 | Jamie Clossick | 543 | £109,000 |
| Mar 2023 | Lin Chen | 305 | £65,310 |
| Nov 2023 | Ian Gascoigne | 347 | £62,198 |
| Mar 2024 | Ludovic Geilich | 207 | £56,150 |
| Nov 2024 | Ravi Sheth | 299 | £68,580 |
| 2025 | Konstantinos Patsourakis | 279 | £67,990 |
Bracken’s 2007 triumph still leads on first-place money, while Clossick’s 2022 success holds the record for entries and total prize pool. At the other end of the scale, the 171-entry 2014 event won by Justin Astley shows how significantly attendance has varied across the years.
How the 2025 Blackpool Festival Finished
The reigning champion is Konstantinos “Kostas” Patsourakis, who won the November 2025 £1,250 Main Event after a remarkable three-way all-in on the deciding hand. A king on the river delivered the title and £67,990, following his earlier GUKPT Leeds Main Event victory in 2023 for £78,419.
Last year’s field numbered 279 entries, creating a prize pool of approximately £289,500. That is well below the record attendance from 2022, but it still made for a substantial Main Event ahead of the season-ending Grand Final.
Other Notable Blackpool Winners in 2025
The support events produced several strong results of their own. The £250 Mini Main attracted 699 entries, while the £1,650 High Roller brought 82 entries and paid a first prize of £36,810.
- Mini Main: Gilbert “Gilly” Black, 699 entries, approximately £30,100 first prize
- NLHE High Roller: Harry Sandford, 82 entries, £36,810 first prize
- GUKPT Cup: Keith Littlewood, 150 entries, £14,170 first prize
- PLO: Alexander “Alex” Rizvi, 133 entries, £5,080 first prize
- Kav Cup: Adam Clark, 225 entries, £3,940 first prize
The Main Event and Mini Main provide useful comparisons for this year’s participants. The 2026 guarantees of £250,000 and £100,000 respectively leave room for the eventual prize pools to exceed the advertised minimums if entries are strong enough.
Satellites, the 2026 Season and What Comes Next
Grosvenor has published live target-cashout satellites for the Blackpool Main Event, with several qualifying sessions advertising multiple seats. Its online live-event-credit satellite ladder also begins from £1, giving lower-stakes players a route into larger buy-ins without paying the full entry directly.
A poker satellite tournament offers a seat or tournament credit rather than the usual cash first prize. Qualifying still involves entry fees and the possibility of losing them, so players should treat it as a tournament decision rather than a guaranteed discount.
Blackpool arrives late in a GUKPT season that has already produced a landmark result. In September, Renee Xie became the tour’s first female Main Event champion after winning the £560 Luton event, underlining how new names can still emerge after two decades of competition.
After Blackpool, the GUKPT Grand Final moves to The Victoria in London, with the main live festival scheduled for November 19–29 and a £500,000 guaranteed Main Event. Blackpool will therefore be the final regular opportunity for players to add a major tour title before the season-ending festival.
Why Blackpool is Important to British Poker
Few domestic tournament stops can point to a history stretching from televised 2007 finals to modern fields of more than 500 entries. Blackpool’s appeal comes partly from its established local poker community and partly from the chance to join a winners’ list that includes respected British circuit professionals and returning champions.
This edition carries an additional note of finality. Whoever lifts the Main Event trophy on November 8 will become the 21st Blackpool champion, but the final Kav Cup on October 31 will mark the end of a separate tradition that has raised money for good causes and commemorated one of the tour’s best-loved characters.
Players can consult Grosvenor’s official festival schedule for any changes to times, structures or entry details.
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