London’s Harry Demetriou narrowly missed out on becoming the fi fth British player to win a WPT title after twice losing on the river to Stan Weiss’ Fives at the Mirage Poker Showdown.

Demetriou missed his chance to take a commanding lead in the heads-up battle when Weiss’s K-5, which was dominated by Demetriou’s K-6, hit a dream Five on the river gifting the American victory and $1.3m.

After several hours of final table action the last two players’ chip stacks were reasonably balanced with Weiss enjoying a narrow lead. The outdraw was particularly harsh on Demetriou given that Weiss had already delivered a vicious bad beat to the British player earlier in the tournament.

Demetriou had been horribly unlucky to arrive at the heads-up without the majority of the tournament’s chips. When the final table was threehanded Stan Weiss had moved all-in on Demetriou on the turn of a K -5 -2 -2 board. The London based player was sat on trip Twos with a Ten kicker and called the bet. Weiss flipped over J-5, and with only the two remaining Fives left to keep him alive, the river brought Stan his 5% lifeline and put him back in contention. Had the bad River cards thwart Demetriou’s attempt to win WPT title beat not arose Demetriou would have been heads-up against third place finisher Devin Porter with a huge 3/1 chip lead of $5,500,000 to $1,700,000.

Demetriou would have joined the ranks of Surinder Sunar, Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott, Roland de Wolfe and John Gale who have each secured a WPT bracelet. There are 72 WPT titles currently in circulation with Gus Hansen at the top of the tree with four titles to his name. De Wolfe won a WPT title in Paris last year, and recently came third in the recent WPT Championship at the Bellagio picking up $1m.

Making the headlines

Demetriou is a well known player on the British poker scene and has pocketed nearly $2m in tournament winnings in the last four years, including a £250,000 first place finish from 2004’s Victor Chandler Poker Cup. He also made the headlines at last year’s Main Event after having a run-in with the brash American Josh Arieh, who broke etiquette by mocking him after hitting a flush against the odds. Demetriou eventually finished 18th.

Meanwhile Demetirou’s conqueror Stan Weiss also went on to scoop the $500 no-limit tournament at the Mirage, netting himself another $75,000. Looks like lady luck was on his side that week.

Final table finishers:
1st: Stanley Weiss (USA) $1,320,255
2nd: Harry Demetriou (UK) $673,272
3rd: Devin Porter (Eng) $332,937
4th: David Williams (USA) $221,958
5th: Steve Frederick (USA) $166,469
6th: Robert Mizrachi (USA) $129,476