Weekly Tournament Recap: Hellmuth Back to Winning, APPT Underway

It has been an action packed week on the global poker tournament scene, with a number of major events having taken place at a number of locations. Here are three of the major events that have either finished or gotten under way in the last week and a bit.

Phil Hellmuth wins 54th Professional Tournament

He’s a polarizing character in the game of poker who most people either love or hate. Whatever your view, the fact is Phil Hellmuth is one of the most distinguished poker players the game has ever seen.

The man colloquially known as the Poker Brat solidified that this week after he won his 54th professional poker tournament at the Pittsburgh Poker Open in the US.

The event may not have exactly be the same calibre as the WSOP. However, winning the event was still a major achievement considering the fact that it also featured multiple WSOP in-the-money finishers Shaun Deeb, Josh Brikis and David Baker.

Hellmuth’s latest milestone is the continuation of what has been a great year for him on the poker table thus far. Besides winning the Pittsburgh Poker Open, Hellmuth has also placed in-the-money at eight different WSOP events in 2014.

APPT Auckland Gets Underway

The Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) started its Auckland leg earlier this week, and the turnout has been quite solid.

A total of 225 players turned out over the tournament’s three starting flights, which was an increase over the field in last year’s event. Out of the original field, 80 survived and made the cut to Day 2 of the APPT Auckland, which is set to get underway tomorrow in the New Zealand city.

Hometown player Terangi Matenga currently leads the remaining field, with a stack of 170,400 chips. He holds a respectable buffer over Australian Robert Spano, who is second on the chip ladder with 130,600 chips.

Two New Zealand players – Marc Witkopf and Darren Lukas – round out the top four on the chip count list. Witkopf finished the first day of play with 116,700 chips while Lukas will enter Day 2 with 112,500 chips to his name.

2014 partypoker World Poker Tour UK Main Event Begins

Nottingham is currently playing host to some of the best poker players in Europe – and the world – as the partypoker WPT UK Main Event gets underway.

Two starting flights took place at the event which attracted a total of 333 entries. 170 players survived to make it to Day 2 of the Main Event, but that was quickly cut down to 51 after the second day of play came to an end on Thursday night.

Former WSOP Europe Main Event winner Adrian Mateos currently has the largest stack of the remaining field, with 560,500 chips to his name.

He is followed by Christos Kyprianou and Ben Warrington, who are the only two other players with over half a million chips heading into Day 3, with 525,500 and 507,000 respectively.

However, neither of them is likely to get too comfortable as the event enters its third day given the talent that still remains, which include 2013 WSOP Main Event final tablist Sylvain Loosli and WSOP Gold Bracelet holder Jake Cody.