The 2017 edition of the Universal Championship of Poker at MPN ended with Simon Jones being crowned the “Greatest Poker Player in the Universe”.
This year’s Universal Championship of Poker was the biggest one to date and awarded more than €810,000 in payouts throughout the series. The series comprised of 59 events with €75,000 in prize pool guarantees that represented an increase of €250,000 from last year’s guarantees.
A unique aspect of the UCOP was a €10,000 leaderboard tracking player’s progress to determine who the Greatest Poker Player in the Universe was.
Simon Jones, a professional poker player/sports psychology lecturer, commented on his win by saying that he had not planned on playing the entire UCOP series, but had been doing really well on the MPN during the previous few months. He added that the size of the fields in the network tournaments showed that one had a realistic opportunity of getting close to the money a decent chunk of the time and he, therefore, decided to see how the first few days went before committing himself.
Jones also said that after a few third place finishes and other deep runs put him in the top five, a €5.4K win in Event #32 catapulted him to the top spot. He added that he is chuffed to actually have won.
Alex Scott, Head of Product (Network Games) at Microgaming, said that the poker industry’s most thrilling tournament series has once more come to a close, with another huge increase in Prize Pools compared to the previous year.