The Aussie Millions is always a well-attended poker festival and is considered as one of the most popular poker events held outside of North America. And as we found out this year, the event’s popularity hasn’t waned one iota. A total of 629 players signed up for the event and at the conclusion of all the three Day 1 days, the field of 629 players have now been whittled down to just 320. From here on out, you can be sure that business is about to pick up.
Leading the way heading into Day 2 is Day 1A chip leader Brian Payne, who kept his place as the overall leader from Day 1A with a healthy stack of 299,900 chips. Coming in at second is fellow Day1A alum Phillip Willcocks with 208,400 chips while Patrik Antonius, the chip leader from Day 1C, sits with 204,800 chips in his stack. Incidentally, majority of the chip leaders heading into Day 2 all came from Day 1A, including Payne, Willcocks, Kevin Rabichos (5th – 183,900), Mark McQuinn (6th – 176,600), James Obst (8th – 156,700), Ayaz Mahmood (9th – 154,700), and Billy Jordanou (10th – 147,000).
The only representative from Day 1B is 7th place Frank Rusnak who ended his day as Day 1B’s chip leader with 165,100 in chips. Day 1A’s dominance in the leader board can be attributed to the low number of players, only 157, who played on that day compared to Day 1B’s 196-strong turnout and Day 1C’s even more impressive 276 people turnout.
With the total prize pool of A$6.29 million officially set – first place takes home A$ 1.6 million – you can be sure that the poker action Down Under is about to heat up faster than the country’s already sweltering temperatures.
APT Asian Series Cebu Final Table Set
Moving on up north to the Philippines, the Asian Poker Tour’s first event of 2013, the Asian Series Cebu, is set to kick off its Main Event final table. Leading the way is Korean poker player Jeon Seung Soo with a commanding 671,000 in chips followed by Japanese player Koyama Kieta with 445,000 in chips and fellow Korean Kim Min Soo with 325,000 in chips. Surprisingly, the Final Table of this tournament only has one Filipino, Edwin Marzan, who sits in 4th place with 228,000 chips. As for the rest of the Final Table, there’s Englishman Stevie Moon sitting comfortably in 5th place with 190,000 in chips, Singaporeans Anne Ylarde and Lim Soo Ghee with 169,000 and 110,000 in chips, respectively, and Russian Timofei Levanov as the short stack with 96,000 in chips.
Wynn Classic added to Card Player Tour
Finally, Card Player Magazine has announced a partnership with Wynn Poker involving the inclusion of the Wynn Classic poker tournament as an official stop on the Card Player Poker Tour. The 12-event series will begin on February 28, 2013 and will have as much as $450,000 in guaranteed prize pools with buys-ins ranging from $270 + $30 all the way up to the $5,000 + $180 buy-in for the CPPT Main Event. The aforementioned main event, which is scheduled to take place from March 17 to 21, is expected to generate a prize pool of $1 million, ensuring a healthy turnout for a tournament that’s steadily becoming a worth addition to a poker player’s tournament calendar.
