One very special trophy was handed out at GUKPT Luton last week … to mark commentator Phil “The Tower” Heald’s remarkable achievement of attending all 150 legs of the GUKPT since the tour first started in 2007.
The Tower attended the very first GUKPT in Bolton as a blogger for the A World of Poker (AWOP) forum and is now the live stream anchor for all Grosvenor Poker events including Goliath and the new UK Poker Open. Now 55, he is the only person in the world who has been to every single leg of the GUKPT.
Surprise presentation
At GUKPT Luton, The Tower was utterly gobsmacked when Cardroom Direct founder Andy Booth delayed play after the Day 2 dinner break and called Phil over to the feature table. In a surprise presentation, Grosvenor Poker was awarding The Tower with a few “little bits and pieces” to celebrate his 150th GUKPT stop. The Tower was then presented with a series of “Mystery Bounty” envelopes containing a return flight to Las Vegas and a $1k entry into the WSOP Mini Main tournament along with a special GUKPT trophy bearing the words “150 not out.”
The Tower said: “I was absolutely speechless. I was breaking up, to be honest. It was a total surprise – I didn’t even know that Luton was our 150th stop!”
After the award was published on Facebook, accolades for the veteran commentator poured in. MainEventTravel.com Managing Director Fraser MacIntyre described him as “a true legend of our game” while Paul McTaggart wrote: “The only thing more iconic to the GUKPT tour than the Tower is the Day 1 ice cream!” Grosvenor Ambassador Richard Trigg added: “a giant of a man in stature and as a person.”
Early days of the GUKPT
The Tower hails from Rotherham where he combined his first career as a Coca-Cola and Whitbread lorry driver with a bunch of DJing gigs on the side – weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals, quiz nights, poker nights and ten years of compering karaoke evenings. In 2004, he moved to Blackpool to take up DJing full-time and became involved with a local poker forum called A World of Poker. At the time, poker forums were the only way that players could find out what was happening at live events and forum bloggers would travel the world reporting from various tournaments.
In 2006 The Tower got his first poker broadcasting stint on a poker show for Sky TV. He was then asked by A World of Poker to be a frontman for their new online broadcast called Internet Corner. After a year of blogging the GUKPT, Nuts TV was launched in partnership with World of Poker and The Tower started recording videos from GUKPT stops. He said: “This was long before live streams. We were doing interviews in the breaks, interviews with winners, that kind of thing and then uploading the videos. So I was going to every GUKPT leg. Then, in 2013, Cardroom Direct – which runs all that side of thing for Grosvenor – started up a live stream with me doing the commentary.”
In addition to all his Grosvenor events, The Tower has also worked at the Battle of Malta and the Irish Open as well as the now-defunct MPN Poker Tour and the Gala Casino British Poker Tour. He said: “The only DJing I do now is for a few charity poker events and also every year at Goliath during the Jokers Wild tournament. We have music blasting out all night with people dancing and jumping up and down on all the tables and so on. It’s a lot of fun. Plus some poker gets played.”
GUKPT Blackpool is his favourite leg on the tour, and not just because he lives there. He said: “The Blackpool event is fantastic - we always manage to get out every night and have fun. GUKPT Blackpool is always the one where people turn up on the first day and leave on the last day, they don’t just come for one or two tournaments. They come to party. You see them coming back to the hotel at 8am in the morning after being out all night. It’s always been the most fun stop.”
Heading to Vegas
The Tower (pictured above) is super-excited about competing in Vegas – the $1K Mini Main will be the biggest buy-in tournament he’s ever played – and he’ll be joined there by some 25 Grosvenor Road to Vegas promotion winners as well as all the Grosvenor Ambassadors. He said: “I think the WSOP is going to be very emotional this year, with Doyle Brunson passing away so recently. It’s the first one without him ever.
“Grosvenor’s live events are now on a six-week break so, this year, I’ll also be able to see the Main Event “Shuffle Up and Deal” ceremony which will be great. And even if I win the Mini, and then go on to win the Main Event (!), I’ll be back in Coventry, wearing a bracelet on both arms, in time to commentate at Goliath at the end of July!
The Tower reckons this year’s Goliath will be another record-breaker. He said: “We had 10,580 runners last year and I think we’ll beat it again this year. It wouldn’t surprise me if we were close to 12,000 this year. It’s a fantastic week.”
MainEventTravel.com is the Official Travel Partner for Goliath and is recommending all players bag their rooms now to make sure they can stay exactly where they want. Anyone wishing to play this year’s Goliath is strongly encouraged to book their accommodation as soon as possible with MainEventTravel.
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