The man credited with building the European Poker Tour into the continent’s biggest live circuit does not need another trophy to justify his place in the game’s history. He picked one up anyway. John Duthie won the £550 Big Shot event at 888poker LIVE London on October 13, beating a 98-entry field at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino for £12,470.
A Big Shot Field With Real Depth
The £550 Big Shot was never going to be the marquee event of the 888LIVE London festival, which runs from October 8 through October 18, but it still drew a respectable 98 entries, building a £47,020 prize pool comfortably above the posted £30,000 guarantee. Nine players returned for the final table, and the money stretched from £1,300 for the min-cash up to the £12,470 top prize, with several players along the way adding meaningful chapters to their own tournament resumes.
Philippe Souki’s exit in ninth for £1,300 barely dented a career that already includes more than $2.5 million in live tournament cashes, while Max Winberg’s eighth-place finish for £1,410 marked his first recorded live score in four years. Henry Fulcher, who busted in fifth for £3,010, set a new career-high live result in the process. By the time the field thinned to two, it was Duthie and Rafael Robles left to play for the title, with Duthie closing out the win and sending Robles home with £10,500 for the runner-up finish.
Why Duthie’s Name Still Carries Weight
For most of the players at that final table, winning £12,470 in a £550 event would be the headline of their year. For Duthie, it is a curiosity, because his real legacy was written off the felt. Duthie is widely credited as the creator of the European Poker Tour, the circuit he conceived in the early 2000s after watching the early success of the World Poker Tour in the United States. Working as a television producer at the time, Duthie recognized that poker’s growing television audience had no equivalent stage in Europe, and the tour he built from that idea launched in 2004 and went on to become the dominant live circuit on the continent for the better part of two decades, producing stops from Barcelona to Prague to Monte Carlo along the way.
Duthie’s own competitive record predates even that. His best-known individual result came in November 2000, when he won the Poker Million tournament on the Isle of Man for £1,000,000, still the largest single cash of his playing career and a result that came years before the EPT existed. That combination, a serious player’s résumé paired with a builder’s legacy, is part of why a £12,470 side-event win in London still makes news more than two decades later. Poker has no shortage of administrators who can run a tour, and no shortage of grinders who can win a side event. Few people have done both at Duthie’s level.
A Festival Still Building Toward Its Biggest Days
The Big Shot result is just one data point in a festival that still has its two headline attractions ahead of it. The £2,000 High Roller and the £1,250 Main Event remain the events 888LIVE London regulars circle on the calendar, and last year’s editions set a high bar. The 2025 High Roller, run at a £1,650 buy-in, was won by Nuno Duarte for £43,510, while the 2025 Main Event drew 367 entries and crowned Gang Wang as champion after he defeated Calogero Morreale heads-up for £86,600. Those numbers give organizers a clear target to chase as the rest of the 2026 schedule plays out at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino through October 18.
Other events already underway at the festival point to a healthy turnout across the full schedule. The £250 Pot-Limit Omaha 4-Card event drew 61 entries for a £12,750 prize pool, with Maksims Uskovs topping Lin Chen heads-up for the £4,170 title, while Aleksandrs Golubevs, the 2023 WPT500 UK champion, added a third-place finish to his own resume. Meanwhile, the £340 Mini Main Event was still in progress as of the Big Shot’s conclusion, with a £114,560 prize pool on the line and a first-place prize of £26,220 awaiting whoever survives a stacked bubble.
What the Win Means Beyond the Numbers
A £12,470 cash will not move Duthie’s lifetime earnings in any meaningful way, and nobody expects him to chase a full-time comeback to the tournament grind. What the result does is reinforce something poker fans already sensed: the people who built the modern live tournament infrastructure, from the EPT’s televised final tables to the regional series that followed in its wake, were often capable players in their own right before they became administrators and promoters. Duthie’s win at 888LIVE London is a reminder that the game’s architects did not simply study poker from a boardroom. Readers looking to sharpen the fundamentals that separate a deep run from an early exit, the kind of decision-making that built careers like Duthie’s, can find a structured starting point in Poker Pro Academy’s how to play poker guide.
Looking Ahead to the Festival’s Final Stretch
With the High Roller and Main Event still to come, 888LIVE London’s 2026 edition has its most consequential days still in front of it. Duthie’s run through the Big Shot adds a pleasant storyline to the first week of the festival, but the bigger fields, bigger prize pools, and bigger storylines are still to be decided before the series wraps on October 18.
