This hand occurred during the 2024 PokerStars EPT Paris at the beautiful Le Club Barrière Paris on February 23, between Hendon Mob co-founder Barny Boatman and UK-based tour regular Lewis Spencer.
Day Three was winding down as 62 players remained out of 1,747 runners. The prize pool for the event was $9,038,000, witha buy-in of $5,763, and the eventual winner [Boatman] would take home a sweet $1,390,824.
Boatman was sitting at the featured table with a stack of 530,000, while Spencer had him covered with 1,130,000. The tournament was at Level 21, with the blinds 10,000/15,000 and a 15,000 ante. A few minutes before this hand’s pre-flop action, an announcement rang out that only five hands remained to close the evening.
As the pre-flop action began, commentator Joe Stapleton quipped, "Oh Boy, Hello!" when he saw the hands dealt to Boatman and Spencer.
In the video above, Boatman talks through the hand moment-to-moment, providing exclusive insight into the thought process of a legendary poker tournament professional.
What was the origin of the Hendon Mob website?
"Not a lot of people know, but Hendon is actually a neighborhood, a London suburb," said Boatman. "The original members of The Hendon Mob were me, my brother Ross Boatman, Joe Beevers, andRam Vaswani."
The close friends developed a basic website 24 years ago to share their poker misadventures traveling around the UK. It eventually grew in popularity as other players wanted in on the fun, and the site began to generate a loyal following. The four founders later sold the platform to the GPI (Global Poker Index) CEO Alex Dreyfus.
Today, The Hendon Mob database boasts more than 837,122 players, and is poker’s most popular results and ranking database.
Boatman's first seven-figure score
Legend. Icon. Comedian. Grinder. Visionary. Future Poker HOF. The professional’s professional. We could go on and on and on. The two-time WSOP bracelet champion finally got his first seven-figure score at EPT Paris.
The prize pushes the 68-year-old’s career earnings to over $4,800,000 and earned him an ambassador role at PokerStars, much to the jubilation of the entire poker community. What's next? A full WSOP schedule and possibly some bigger buy-ins.
You can follow Boatman's progress at the WSOP on X.
Images courtesy of PokerStars.
