Another exciting week of tournaments are in the books, with many stories emerging. The Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure has come and gone, the WSOP Circuit Event and WPT World Poker Open preliminaries are underway, and the Aussie Millions Main Event has started up. Without a doubt another huge week is in store.
Day 1A of the Aussie Millions Main Event went down yesterday, with a familiar face from last years Main Event emerging as the chip leader. Andrew Black, who finished 3rd in last years Main Event, started his day off in a rather rocky manner, before knocking out a multitude of players to end the day with 167,800, good for over 40 thousand more than 2nd place. Black looks to be a force when Day 2 starts tomorrow, going into 400/800. Unfortunately for Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke, his day did not end well. He made an untimely exit early in the day, losing a good deal of his stack against Mike Sexton’s aces, before running into aces again and busting out on Day 1A. Other notable players who will be heading into Day 2 with good stacks include Greg “FBT” Mueller with 108,400, Raymond Rahme and Kenny Tran, who both final tabled the World Series Main Event this year, will be heading into Day 2 with 79,000 and 75,800, respectively. Tom “Durr” Dwan, fresh off his 2nd place finish in the Pot Limit Omaha rebuy tournament, will be heading into Day 2 with 67,500. Today will be Day 1B, tomorrow Day 1C, while Wednesday both days combine for Day 2, finally culminating with the final table on Saturday.
Meanwhile, down in Robinsonville, Mississippi the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker are in town. The smaller events are underway, with many $300s, $500s, and $700s finished. One interesting tidbit is that in the very first preliminary of the WPT World Poker Open Series online pro James Mackey took 6th out of 782 runners for $10,878. Mackey has had a pretty darn good year live; in the summer he won a $5k bracelet event at the World Series for over $700k. Online, he is known as mig.com, boasting results such as winning the 1K WCOOP event for $580k. The $10k WPT Main Event starts this Sunday, while the $7.7 k WSOP Circuit Main Event starts this Saturday. It will be interesting to see the turnouts these Main Events get with both being in town, and with the Aussie Millions Main Event going on at the same time.
In the horizon is the WPT Borgata Winter Open, with that series starting on the 15th and running until the 31st. Until next week…