Over 20,000 poker players, enthusiasts and bored wives came from all over the UK to join the poker festivities, including free tournaments, live tutorials and the chance to learn from and meet some of poker’s most famous faces.


The two-day event was headlined by sponsors PKR – the next-generation poker site hosted a number of UK’s top pub poker leagues in the PKR Dome in order to run their respective tournaments.


The Unibet Lecture Marquee was one of the particular highlights, as several top pros gave seminars on various aspects of the game - 2008 WSOP Main Event Champion Peter Eastgate and a top line-up of British poker professionals including Neil Channing, Paul Jackson, Ian Frazer, Nik Persaud, John Tabatabai, Liv Boeree and Alex Rousso.


In addition, 2006 WSOP Main Event Champion Jamie Gold gave a lecture, as well as hosting a very successful charity tournament at the Empire on Thursday evening. Jamie spoke on both days of Poker in the Park, proving his unsavoury reputation on the poker forums seems pretty unjustified.


Littlewoods Poker ran the Littlewoods Poker Tuition Tent, where players could play open-handed against their celebrity players Mark Goodwin, Michael Greco and Tony Cascarino. Another highlight was the Bluff Europe heads-up tent, featuring state of the art mano-a-mano PokerTek Heads-Up Challenge electronic tables.


Finally, visitors were greeted by Neteller, London Poker Circuit, pokershopuk.com, Gamcare, Blackbelt Poker and London Chess & Bridge in the Poker Multitent, which offered a menagerie for players both amateur and expert.