Kalidou Sow wins PokerStars Festival London Main Event for £121,803

It’s the stuff that dreams are made of, quite literally in the case of Frenchman Kalidou Sow, whose nocturnal fantasies became reality as he took down the PokerStars Festival London Main Event in a heads-up battle to secure the £121,803 ($170,239) top prize, with the bonus of a coveted $30K PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Platinum Pass thrown in for good measure!

It’s been quite a few weeks for Sow, who took down the PokerStars Championhship Main Event in Prague just five weeks ago – his biggest ever score of €675,000 ($795,456) launching him into the headlines – and in London he was facing a massive field of 852 entries, each forking out £990 which created a prizepool of £743,796 for the 5-day event at London’s Hippodrome Casino.

Sow didn’t say whether his dream on the eve of the final day ended in victory or not, but it certainly wasn’t a foregone conclusion, the Frenchman entering the final table sitting 6th out of 8 in the chip count – with Englishman Dando a massive leader with 35% of the chips in play.

The Festival Series was designed to give players the feeling of the full big stage poker experience for a smaller budget, and that’s exactly what was delivered in London – and you’d have been hard-pushed to know you weren’t watching the biggest stars in the game competing, with the action fast and furious as the big money approached…

Live qualifiers such as Hippodrome regular Tsz Chung Ho, playing courtesy of a last-longer satellite, and David Mander, playing courtesy of an $11 Spin&Go victory on PokerStars were giving as good as they got against the more established players like Sow, but in the end the French pros dream of a heads-up finale against Dando became a reality – the pair battling it out for only 30 minutes or so before the title was decided…

As the Live updates described it, ‘The final hand was an interesting one that saw Sow in the tank for around five minutes. He opened the button to 500,000 with the blinds at 100K/200K, and Dando three-bet to 1.6 million. Sow called to see a J♥4♦8♠ flop, and then called Dando's 950,000 c-bet. The turn then came the 5♥, and Dando jammed for almost 6.2 million. Sow thought for a long time, and would have had 8 million left if he called and was wrong…

But this was the stuff dreams are made of. Sow made the call, and saw his A♥J♦ was ahead of Dando's 7♥5♠. The Q♣ river changed nothing, and the Frenchman took it down.'

Final table results

* Indicates a heads up was made

* The winner of this event also wins a $30,000 Platinum Pass!