Historical Poker Archive | Event: March 17–19, 2011
Praz Bansi captured the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour London Main Event in March 2011, collecting £101,020 after overcoming a field of 245 entries. The tournament was played at the Victoria Poker Room in London, with a £1,500 plus £150 buy-in and a recorded prize pool of £367,500.
A Second GUKPT Main Event Title
The victory was another notable result for Bansi, who had won the tour’s inaugural Main Event in Bolton in 2007. His return to the winner’s circle in London highlighted a strong run across several years of British tournament poker.
Manig Loeser finished runner-up for £67,070, while Gary Lindsay placed third for £44,100. Karl Mahrenholz and Jamie Roberts completed the top five. The final table brought together several recognizable names from the UK tournament circuit.
London’s Place on the Tournament Calendar
The GUKPT was an established part of the British live-poker calendar by 2011. Its London stop attracted a competitive field and gave Bansi another major domestic title.
Archive note: This is an independently written historical summary, not the original 2011 article. The event date is historical; this site’s WordPress publication date is the reconstruction’s actual publication date.
Historical references: The Hendon Mob — GUKPT London results; CardPlayer — March 21, 2011 report.
Two GUKPT Titles, Four Years Apart
When Praz Bansi won the London Main Event in March 2011, the result carried significance beyond the first-place cheque. He had already won the tour’s inaugural Bolton Main Event in 2007. Returning to the winners’ list four years later demonstrated the span of his results on a British circuit that had become a regular fixture on the tournament calendar.
Bolton and London were separate tournaments, with different opponents and circumstances. What links them is the tour itself. The earlier title gave Bansi a place in GUKPT history; the London result added another major entry to his record. It is more accurate to describe that achievement through the two documented results than to suggest an uninterrupted run of success between them.
The London Field and Prize Money
The 2011 London Main Event recorded 245 entries at the Victoria Poker Room. With a £1,500 entry fee plus a £150 charge, the event produced a listed prize pool of £367,500. Bansi’s £101,020 first prize represented a substantial share of that pool and marked the largest single award in the published results.
Manig Loeser finished second and collected £67,070, while Gary Lindsay took £44,100 for third. Karl Mahrenholz and Jamie Roberts filled the next two places. Those results offer a clear picture of the final standings without requiring a reconstructed hand-by-hand account. A finishing list records who remained at the end and what they earned; it does not, on its own, reveal every turning point that brought them there.
Why the London Stop Mattered
By 2011 the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour offered British players a recognizable series of live Main Events rather than a single annual championship. The London tournament was part of that wider calendar. Its field size and published payouts illustrate the scale of the domestic circuit at the time, alongside the international events that drew much of poker’s media attention.
Bansi’s victory is particularly useful as a historical reference point because the result can be checked in both a tournament database and contemporary news coverage. The event database establishes the finishing order and payouts; the period report records how the achievement was presented when it happened. These are complementary forms of evidence, not interchangeable accounts of every hand played.
A Result Worth Preserving
The headline from March 2011 is straightforward: Praz Bansi won the GUKPT London Main Event and £101,020. The surrounding context makes that result more meaningful. It was his second GUKPT Main Event title, earned at a different venue four years after his first, against a documented field of 245 entries.
This reconstruction preserves the verified tournament outcome and its place on the British circuit. It does not claim to reproduce the original article or invent table action that the cited records do not establish.