Erik Seidel in contention as Ullman leads final table at Aussie Millions Main Event

With just seven players remaining in contention for the 2020 Aussie Millions Main Event, tomorrow will see the world’s poker press gather at the Crown Casino in Melbourne for the eagerly anticipated finale.

A brow-beating day at the felt saw a mammoth 14 hours of poker take place on the penultimate day of the Aussie Millions Main Event, as the field of 820 players, each of whom paid A$10,600 t to sit down in the Main Event, was whittled down to just seven.

That field of 820 hopefuls is the second largest in the tournament’s glorious history, with the reputation of the event now firmly established as a major title worth having among players of any level, including the super-elite. That is illustrated as much by the quality of the final table players as it is anything else, with stars like Seidel making the final showdown. While the former WSOP Main Event runner-up to Johnny Chan wasn’t impressed by playing for 14 hours, he was delighted to reach the final.

All the players will get a day off now to recover, something that few tournaments do at this stage and a rest period Seidel was very much in support of. With the Australian Tennis Open in its early stages just as this festival finishes, that means players can enjoy watching the likes of Rafael Nadal in action tomorrow before returning to the felt at 12.30pm local time on Friday to battle for the win.

With the final seven players representing six countries, competition will be fierce. Nino Ullmann from Germany goes into play as the chip leader on 5.5 million chips, and he is followed in the counts by the second German player in the final seven, Oliver Weis (4,475,000). With Aussie player Vincent Wan (4,150,000) and Seidel (4,050,000) hot on their heels, there is then a gap to three shorter stacks in New Zealand’s Gareth Pepper (2,465,000), Canada’s Nicolas Malo (1,975,000) and Vietnam’s Ngoc Tai Hoang (1,875,000).

The penultimate day was packed with drama, including a brutal aces-against-kings run out that saw Vincent Wan eliminate Mike Del Vecchio, who had been trying to reach his third consecutive final table at the series. He wasn’t the only one leaving the party without making the final, with Nick Pupillo, Fabian Quoss, Manig Loeser and Scott Margereson all falling short.

Here are the final seven players, their seats at the final table and those all-important chip-stacks which will govern how play begins if not how it ends. It’s no limit hold’em, and so the title could be anyone’s on Friday, but Erik Seidel will be a popular winner if he can close it out, and the veteran, who seems to get better with age is poised for another landmark victory should he reign supreme Down Under.

Aussie Millions 2020 Main Event final table chipcounts: