EPT London: Poker players add their names to London’s football heritage
There are plenty of cities in the world that would claim to be the home of football, but — bias alert — they’re all playing for second behind London. By common agreement, the English Premier League is the most competitive in the world, and presently seven of 20 teams in the division come from London.
It follows that many of the activities here at EPT London have focused on football, including a five-a-side tournament held last week that pitted teams assembled by the PokerStars Ambassadors against one another.
High standards?
We weren’t exactly talking Premier League standard, but it certainly seemed competitive enough for a bunch of card-playing amateurs. There was also a £500 buy-in to the EPT London Missing People Charity Tournament available to members of the winning team, plus a silver “Spadie” trophy. The players were hyped.
As grey skies loomed overhead and red buses trundled past, these hardy souls ran out onto the pitch in Waterloo. Teams were captained by Mason Pye, Arlie Shaban, Steve Enrique, Benjamin Bruneteaux and Julien Brecard, with Tom “Majin” Hayward and Rory “Chelsea Rory” Jennings among the players.
“There was a good pub across the road where we all had coffee and tea afterwards. The beers came later.”
“The five-a-side footy was fun and super competitive in the end, way more than I thought it would be,” Hayward said. “There were two main teams: Steve Enriquez’s team and Brandon Nguyen’s [Team Yu] team, who were all just crispy good players. Obviously, they were all regular players. And then there were four other teams who were way more casual.”
And the winners
Enrique is a former semi-pro footballer, who very nearly broke through to play in the big time. His team — Dillon Scanlan, Edmund Anderson, Nikolai Mamut, Rafael Andrez and Alexander Vimalanathan — ran out winners, and today take their place in the charity event.
“There was a good pub across the road where we all had coffee and tea afterwards,” Hayward said, suggesting a rare level of professionalism among the participants. He quickly undermined it: “The beers came later.”
Check out the highlights from the contest in the video below.
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