With Event 13 in the books and the Main Event’s final table taking place now, the Aussie Millions is nearing its completion. I finished last week’s entry with the results of Event 9, so we’ll jump right in and keep on going with Event 10.
Event 10 took place over two days, featuring a rotation of Pot Limit Holdem, Omaha, and Omaha Hi-Lo. The event attracted 114 entrants for a buy-in of 2,200 AUD each, creating a prize pool of 228,000 AUD. Day one ended with only 13 players remaining, Dag Martin Mekkelsen with the chiplead. Josh “JJProdigy” Field, well known to followers of online poker, finished day one with a healthy 4th place stack, but he couldn’t take it down on day two and ended up in 5th place. Mekkelsen couldn’t hold on to his chiplead and fell to a 3rd place finish, and ‘young gun’ Miachel Pesek triumphed over David “Gunslinger” Bach heads-up to win first prize. Pesek took home 79,800 AUD and Bach received his consolation prize of 45,000 AUD.
Event #10 results:
1) Michael Pesek (79,800 AUD)
2) David Bach (45,600 AUD)
3) Dag Martin Mikkelsen (27,360 AUD)
4) Roy Winston (22,800 AUD)
5) Josh “JJProdigy” Field (18,240 AUD)
6) JJ Hazan (13,680 AUD)
7) Jamie Pickering (9,120 AUD)
8 ) Jeff Brown (6,840 AUD)
9) Mick “The Hoon” Stanton (4,560 AUD)
Next one the list was Event 11, the 1,050 AUD PokerPro No Limit Holdem tournament. This unique event had no dealer and no chips. Instead, players sat a tables of 10, each having their own touch screen computer. A large screen in the middle of the table showed everyone’s stacks, the pot size, and community cards. When it was a particular player’s turn to act, he used his personal computer screen to perform his action. It’s like playing poker on your computer, but your opponents are right at the table with you in the flesh! Something that I find humorous about this event is the fact you still must hide your hole cards when you are taking a look at them, even though they are on a computer screen. It may feel like you’re playing online, but your opponents are right beside you and can look over and peek if you are not careful!
This year’s PokerPro event attracted 97 players, a significant increase from the mere 31 last year. Notable players such as Joe Hachem, Andy Bloch, Clonie Gowen, Phil Laak, and Jennifer Tilly came out for this strange event, but none of them were able to place in the money. However, online notable Mike “Timex” McDonald triumphed over Martin Cardno heads-up and won first place for 33,950 AUD. He even won a bonus prize from PokerPro, a brand new 9,000 AUD Heads-Up Machine.
Event #11 results:
1) Mike “Timex” McDonald (33,950 AUD)
2) Martin Cardno (19,400 AUD)
3) Ramy Tadros (11,640 AUD)
4) Andrew Demetriou (9,700 AUD)
5) Greg “DuckU” Hobson (7,760 AUD)
6) Heng Zhang (5,820 AUD)
7) Nick Binger (3,880 AUD)
8 ) David Lee (2,910 AUD)
9) Lei He (1,940 AUD)
The highly anticipated Main Event was next, featuring a 10,500 AUD buy-in, 780 participants, and a first prize of 1,650,000 AUD. This event was scheduled to take place over an entire week, with ‘Day One’ being spread out over 3 days to accomodate so many entrants. The final table is playing as I write this, with five players remaining. Michael Chrisanthopoulos barely has the chiplead with just over 6.4 million chips, and well-known Eric Seidel is in third place with just over 1.4 million. Three players have busted since the final day of this main event started.
Current Event #12 final table chip counts (as of 10:30 PM EST):
1) Michael Chrisanthopoulos (6,470,000 chips)
2) Alexander Kostritsyn (6,395,000 chips)
3) Erik Seidel (1,380,000 chips)
4) Peter Ling (1,300,000 chips)
Event thirteen featured a heads-up championship, a 5,300 AUD buy-in event featuring a total prize pool of 320,000. It took place over 3 days, two days scheduled for ‘day one’ and then a day two for the final four. Each heads-up match was a best of three, and the winner progressed to the next round. Many notable players cashed this event, with Jeff “ActionJeff” Garza taking the 100,000 AUD first prize. He played a total of 17 heads-up matches, and in many of them he had to mount comebacks to win.
Event #13 results:
1) Jeff Garza (100,000 AUD)
2) Masaaki Kagawa (60,000 AUD)
3) Roy “The Oracle” Winston (40,000 AUD)
4) Xuan Nguyen (40,000 AUD)
5) Lee “Final Table” Nelson (20,000 AUD)
6) Mike “Timex” McDonald (20,000 AUD)
7) David Sonelin (20,000 AUD)
8 ) Alexey Popov (20,000 AUD)
That’s it for my report today, but be sure to return to the FTR Blogs for news about the remaining events and the Main Event’s final table!