The fourth Ladbrokes Poker LEOCOP festival kicked off yesterday at 7pm with the $10,000 Added $150 Re-buy Sunday Opening Tournament. A field of 440 runners from across Europe all played out for an eventual prize pool of $139,750 (the top 50 were paid and $419 was the bottom prize). A full 850 Re-Buys and 9 hours later the field thinned out to just three players; Hefaistos26 from Sweden, Akolas21 from Dublin and slim-boy30 from Notts, who qualified via a $22 satellite.

Akolas quickly sent slim-boy30 packing in third for $14,673 only to lose out nearly an hour later when his two pair was beaten by Hefaistos' two pair with a higher kicker. Akolas took home $22,360 for second while Hefaistos won a very tidy $34,937 and an invitation to Ladbrokes Poker Online Masters Event on November 22nd to compete for a seat in the semi finals of Poker Million VII. Hefaistos is a regular player on Ladbrokes Poker and has won Tuesday's $21K 'Who's the Daddy' twice.

Edward Ihre MD of Ladbrokes Poker said: "This was a brilliant start to the festival. We had players from a myriad of countries playing in the event which I think illustrates that Ladbrokes is still the spiritual home of European Poker and what an important event the LEOCOP is. We expect around the same number of runners, if not more, for our LEOCOP $50 Re-Buy tonight, the extra juice of $10,000 added and a chance to play in PMVII definitely makes it one of, if not the best value tournaments around."

Ladbrokes Poker had other reasons to celebrate today with the news that their most recently signed sponsored player Jonas Danielsson made it to the finals of the Worlds Heads-Up Championship in Barcelona. Last year the title was won by another Ladbrokes sponsored pro Jeff Kimber, who then went on to win the Newcastle GUKPT.

Edward Ihre, MD of Ladbrokes Poker commented: "I am really pleased with the result. It goes to show that our sponsored players are some of the strongest in Europe, as they consistently make it through to the finals of the top events worldwide."

Over the next 15 days Ladbrokes Poker will add over $500,000 to the 16 LEOCOP festival events and will invite each festival event winner and the top 80 that feature on the LEOCOP leaderboard to compete in the invitation only Masters Event on 22nd November for a seat in semi finals of Poker Million VII.