WSOPC Dusk Till Dawn 2026: Ashley Timms and Dumitru Lupu Win Rings as the £1M Main Event Faces a Big Overlay Test

Wednesday, 11 November was a busy day at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham. Two more WSOP Circuit rings were awarded, both to British players, and the second flight of the £1,500 Main Event added another 66 entries to the total.

Ashley Timms won Event #5, the £560 Paradise Mystery Bounty, for £26,497 plus whatever bounties he collected. Dumitru Lupu won Event #8, the £300 Monster Stack, for £14,902 and a WSOP Paradise package. In the Main Event, Romania’s Marian-Ionut Farcas now holds the biggest stack in the field.

Here is what happened, what the numbers mean, and why the next three Main Event flights matter so much.

Quick results

• Event #5, £560 Paradise Mystery Bounty: Ashley Timms (UK) wins £26,497
• Event #8, £300 Monster Stack: Dumitru Lupu (UK) wins £14,902
• Main Event Day 1B: 66 entries, 10 players bag, Marian-Ionut Farcas leads with 744,000
• Main Event total so far: 128 entries over two flights, 19 players through to Day 2

Event #5: Ashley Timms wins the £560 Paradise Mystery Bounty

This was the most-hyped side event of the festival. Before the series, organisers promised 15x £1,500 Main Event seats making up part of the £250,000 guarantee, plus one envelope holding a $15,000 WSOP Paradise package with 10,400GGMillion entry and 13 nights accommodation.

The event started on Monday and ran four regular Day 1 flights plus a Last Chance flight on Wednesday morning:

Flight	Entries	Advanced
Day 1A	83	12
Day 1B	62	10
Day 1C	113	17
Day 1D	167	26
Last Chance	177	26
Total	602	91

The Last Chance flight was the biggest of all. 177 entries is more than any of the regular flights drew, which shows how many players wait until the final opportunity, especially when a turbo structure lets them bag a stack within a few hours.

The money

• Prize pool: £158,025
• Bounty pool: £142,975
• Total: £301,000, well above the £250,000 guarantee
• Places paid: 91 (every player who reached the final day cashed)
• Min-cash: £566

Almost half the total money (about 47.5%) went to bounties. In a mystery bounty, that changes how you play. Once you’re in the money, every knockout earns you a random envelope, so a short-stacked player can earn more by busting people than by moving up a few places. Timms took home £26,497 for first place, but his total for the day was almost certainly higher once his bounty envelopes were added.

Final table results

Place	Player	Country	Prize
1	Ashley Timms	United Kingdom	£26,497
2	Don Jones	United Kingdom	£18,231
3	Jack O’Neill	United Kingdom	£12,487
4	Tai Hoang	United Kingdom	£8,440
5	Viktor Dudnikov	Ukraine	£5,971
6	Tan Le	United Kingdom	£4,317
7	Goonjan Mall	India	£3,191
8	Wen Xu	China	£2,412
9	Stanley Topol	United Kingdom	£1,867
10	Andrew Salami	United Kingdom	£1,479
11	Iulian-Petrut Petra…	United Kingdom	£1,479

Event #8: Dumitru Lupu wins the £300 Monster Stack

The Monster Stack is a single-day event at the cheapest buy-in on the schedule, and it delivered the best value of the week so far.

• Entries: 276
• Prize pool: £71,760
• Guarantee: £25,000, beaten nearly three times over
• Places paid: 42
• Min-cash: £592

Heads-up came down to Dumitru Lupu from Britain against Switzerland’s Acshayan Gunaratnam. Lupu won, taking £14,902, his WSOP Circuit ring and a WSOP Paradise package. All 13 champions of WSOPC UK ring events automatically receive a $5,000 package for the upcoming WSOP Paradise festival in The Bahamas, made up of a $2,750 entry to Day 1a of the Circuit Championship Mystery Bounty plus four nights’ stay and complementary buffet access.

Here’s the practical takeaway: for a £300 entry, Lupu won a ring, nearly £15,000, and a package worth around $5,000. Low buy-in ring events like this are where recreational players have their best realistic chance of winning a WSOP title.

Final table results

Place	Player	Country	Prize
1	Dumitru Lupu	United Kingdom	£14,902
2	Acshayan Gunaratnam	Switzerland	£9,884
3	Mazin Karkotli	United Kingdom	£6,722
4	Konstantinos Patsourakis	Greece	£4,686
5	Marian Dumitrache	Romania	£3,350
6	Alex Maskell	United Kingdom	£2,459
7	Thomas Bingham	United Kingdom	£1,853
8	Reece Aimson	United Kingdom	£1,435
9	Ka Wong	China	£1,144
10	Simeon Tsonev	Bulgaria	£938
11	Nicholas Tyler	United Kingdom	£938

Main Event Day 1B: Farcas takes the overall lead

The £1,500 Main Event (£1,350 plus a £150 fee) carries a £1,000,000 guarantee. Day 1A on Sunday drew 62 entries, and nine made it through, led by Britain’s Gary Nordigian with 701,000.

Day 1B on Wednesday added 66 entries, and 10 players bagged. Romania’s Marian-Ionut Farcas, who had already made the final table of the £1,100 UKPC Masters this year, finished with 744,000, the biggest stack across both flights. Two British players were close behind: Andrew Bradshaw on 715,000 and Ravi Sheth on 568,000.

Day 1B top 10 chip counts

Rank	Player	Country	Chips
1	Marian-Ionut Farcas	Romania	744,000
2	Andrew Bradshaw	UK	715,000
3	Ravi Sheth	UK	568,000
4	Duncan McLellan	UK	290,000
5	Ling Chen	China	230,000
6	Javier Sanchez	Spain	198,000
7	Brandon Sheils	UK	167,000
8	Arian Hassankashani	UK	148,000
9	Daniel Jackson	UK	116,000
10	Dylan Snyder	UK	114,000

Notice the gap between third and fourth: Sheth on 568,000 against McLellan on 290,000. The top three on Day 1B have built a real cushion. With roughly 15% of each flight advancing, most Day 2 players will return with modest stacks.

The £1M guarantee: how big is the overlay risk?

This is the main storyline for the rest of the week. With £1,350 of each entry going to the prize pool, the £1,000,000 guarantee needs about 741 entries to be covered.

	Entries	Prize pool contribution
Day 1A	62	£83,700
Day 1B	66	£89,100
Total so far	128	£172,800
Needed to cover the guarantee	~741	£1,000,000
Shortfall	~613	~£827,200

The Main Event schedule has Day 1c and Day 1d on November 12 and 13, respectively, with a last chance flight on the morning of November 14. The tournament wraps up on November 15. That means those three remaining flights need to average more than 200 entries each.

Can they do it? The weekend flights are always the biggest, and the Mystery Bounty showed how many players arrive late: its last two flights drew 344 of its 602 entries. Even so, going from about 64 entries per flight to more than 200 is a huge jump. An overlay of some size looks likely.

For players, that’s good news. An overlay is free money: if the field falls short, the organisers make up the difference. If you’ve been on the fence about firing a bullet on Day 1C or 1D, the numbers favour playing. Live satellites are still running at Dusk Till Dawn, and online satellites are available at GGPoker.

What’s next at WSOPC Dusk Till Dawn 2026

• Thursday 12 November: 12:00 p.m. £1,500 WSOPC Main Event Day 1c, 1:00 p.m. £300 WSOPC 6-Max £25,000, 7:00 p.m. £120 Main Event Satellite 20x seats
• Friday 13 November: 12:00 p.m. £1,500 WSOPC Main Event Day 1d, 1:00 p.m. £300 WSOPC Bounty £25,000
• Saturday 14 November: Main Event Last Chance flight and Day 2
• Sunday 15 November: Main Event final day

For the full schedule, structures and fees, see our WSOP Circuit UK 2026 Dusk Till Dawn Player Guide.

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