The 2015 Sydney Poker Championships has come to a close with Ben Jee winning the Main Event and Daniel Neilson winning the AU$5k Challenge.
The 2015 Sydney Poker Championships spawned an eight-day festival of poker to be proud of. There were No-Limit Hold’em games, Pot-Limit Omaha and even a Team event. But there were only two that were promising a juicy six-figure score: The AU$3k Main Event and AU$5k Challenge.
The Star Casino captured all the action. The festival ran between 28th July & 10th August. Here is the event breakdown.
Sydney Poker Championships Results (AU$)
Event #1: $330 NLHE Repecharge (Ria Renfrey $63,418)
Event #2: $1,100 NLHE 6-Max 1 x Re-Entry (Dejan Boskovic $39,000)
Event #3: $440 Turbo NLHE Re-Entry (Michael O’Grady $14,500)
Event #4: $440 Teams NLHE (Dave Fox and his team $9,880)
Event #5: $5,000 Challenge Re-Entry (See Below)
Event #6: $550 PLO Re-Entry (Jimmy Tran $13,800)
Event #7: $3,000 NLHE Main Event (See Below)
Event #8: $550 NLHE Bounty Re-Entry (Yibo Zhou $10,560)
Daniel Neilson Wins the AU$5k Challenge
The most expensive buy-in was reserved for the AU$5k Challenge NLHE event, and one of Sydney’s finest proponent’s of the art took it down.
Daniel Neilson defeated a field of 81-entrants to capture the first prize of AU$115,425. His total live tournament earnings are a smidgen below USD$1.8m, making him the 14th most successful Australian in history, just behind Aaron Lim, who also snagged a victory this week when he captured the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Main Event title in Manila.
Neilson has a string of impressive results, most notably a third place finish at the European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event stop in San Remo back in Season 8. He picked up US$392,935 for that score.
It was a tough final table. The 2013 Sydney Poker Championships Main Event winner Daniel Laidlaw finished in 10th, and both Michael Tran (6th) and Didier Guerin (7th) finished runner-up in World Series of Poker Asia Pacific (WSOP-APAC) events last year. Yibo Zhou and Trent Miller were making their second final tables of the festival. Zhou won the NLHE Bounty Event with Miller finishing sixth.
Final Table Results (AU$)
1st. Daniel Neilson – $115,425
2nd. Trent Miller – $76,950
3rd. Hassib Younan – $55,789
4th. Laurence Hall – $36,551
5th. Yibo Zhou – $26,933
6th. Michael Tran – $20,199
7th. Didier Guerin – $17,314
8th. James Camilleri – $14,428
9th. Kamyar Ekrami – $11,543
10th. Daniel Laidlaw – $9,618
Ben Jee Wins the Sydney Championships Main Event
281 players created a $786,800 prize pool in the AU$3,000 Main Event.
Former Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) Gold Coast Champion Peter Matusik began the final day with the chip lead. He would bubble the final table.
The most experienced player at the final table was Tony Kambouroglou, who finished runner-up to Daniel Laidlaw in this event back in 2013. He finished fifth in this one.
Ben Jee would take the title and AU$200,634 in prize money after beating Yusuf Dib in heads-up action. It was Jee’s best score by a country mile. Five of his previous six cashes had come in events held in this casino.
Final Table Results (AU$)
1st. Ben Jee – $200,634
2nd. Yusuf Dib – $127,855
3rd. Adam Hamkin – $71,995
4th. Sam Steindl – $56,256
5th. Tony Kambouroglou – $46,028
6th. Ismael Ismael – $38,160
7th. Charbel Boustani – $29,898
8th. Ricardo Faura – $24,391
9th. Duy Quoc Vu – $18,096
