GUKPT London Recap: Bryan Taylor Wins High Roller, Ali Sarkeshik Takes Mini Main

The latest stop of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour in London is starting to produce the kind of results worth writing about. While the biggest headlines are still forming, the midweek schedule has already delivered two stories worth zeroing in on: Bryan Taylor’s latest reminder that his move from cash games into tournaments is going rather well, and Ali Sarkeshik’s first live title in 22 years.

Here are the details.

At this point, Bryan Taylor’s tournament transition is beginning to look less like an experiment and more like a second career.

The Scottish player, who first caught wider attention when he won the GUKPT Edinburgh Main Event in October 2025, added another notable result this week by taking down the £2,000 High Roller at GUKPT London. The event drew 72 entries and built a £123,120 prize pool, with Taylor eventually coming through for the £38,780 top prize.

Since the Edinburgh win, Taylor has recorded 19 cashes, nine final tables, and a steady run of finishes that suggest he has taken to tournament poker with very little hesitation. There was already a fourth-place finish in the £340 GUKPT London Mini Event back in January, plus a third-place showing in the £250 Mini Main at 888poker LIVE Glasgow. Now there is another outright win to add to that run.

The High Roller paid nine places, and the final table thinned in fairly orderly fashion. Ben Glazebrook was first out in the money, followed by Ajay K, Ahmad Abdelhadi, and Elisha Maarek. Conor O’Driscoll’s exit in fifth left him with the last four-figure score of the event, while Arun Sood and Ian Gascoigne then fell to leave Taylor heads-up with Ravi Sheth.

Sheth has a habit of showing up deep in GUKPT events, and the matchup came with a noticeable £13,000 gap between first and second. Even so, no deal was made. Taylor closed it out for the full £38,780, while Sheth collected £25,860 as runner-up.

The other standout result from London came in the £330 Mini Main, where Ali Sarkeshik finally got his hands on another title after a wait stretching back more than two decades.

Sarkeshik won the event for £28,220, ending a drought that dates all the way back to July 2004, when he won a €5,000 Limit Hold’em tournament at the Aviation Club de France in Paris. Plenty of players go a long time between wins. Twenty-two years is pushing the point a bit.

This one came through a much larger field too. The Mini Main attracted 612 entries and generated a £173,170 prize pool. A long list of recognisable names made the money but did not get near the final table, including Bryan Taylor, Yucel Eminoglu, Tamer Kamel, Dale Wilson, Robert Douras, Mariusz Czech, Calogero Morreale, and Philippe Souki.

The final table then moved steadily until the event reached four-handed play, where the remaining players agreed a deal to flatten the jumps before carrying on for the trophy. Portugal’s Helder Casaca-Sena exited in fourth, Ashkan Ahmedov followed in third not long after another deep run on the heels of his Irish Open Main Event finish, and that left Sarkeshik to play heads-up against Keith Littlewood.

The two veterans played on until the title was settled, with Littlewood eventually taking second for £28,630. Sarkeshik, despite officially finishing first, banked slightly less at £28,220 because of the earlier deal, but that tends to matter a lot less when you are the one holding the trophy at the end.