The 193 players returning for Day 2 action had a leaderboard dominated by local talent – and hopefully within 192 eliminations time – one of them would be happily wearing a Gold Championship Ring!

It took around 150 minutes, but the bubble eventually burst when Englishmen Dan Carter’s A♠ J♠ was unable to hold against Brendan Edmonds’ Q♣ 7♠.

Just on Midnight, the much-loved and occasionally loathed Tony Hachem bit the dust in 11th place to miss out on making his first Aussie Millions Final Table.

Seat 1: Anthony Kingston (983,000)
Seat 2: Jim Mastorakos (1,710,000)
Seat 3: Trung Tran (826,000)
Seat 4: Sam Vakili (366,000)
Seat 5: Glenn Croft (1,696,000)
Seat 6: Brendan Edmonds (1,632,000)
Seat 7: Aaron Wilt (1,299,000)
Seat 8: Brad Rawiller (344,000)
Seat 9: Brent Thomas (1,095,000)
Seat 10: Matthew Ephraums (2,040,000)

The final table was fairly stacked for a 1,143-player field as it featured tournament regular’s Jim Mastorakos, Brent Thomas and Sam Vakili, as well as DeucesCracked instructor Aaron Wilt along with two good mates of mine in Trung Tran and Brendan Edmonds.

Action started fast, but soon grinded to a halt as the final hand wouldn’t be dealt until the 17th hour of play.

Unfortunately Edmonds would again fall short as Matthew Ephraums played a strong heads-up game to be crowned the 2010 Aussie Millions Event 1 Champion, pocket the $200,025 first prize and sport a new Gold Championship Ring!

Note: Stop reading if you don’t like mushy remarks.

On a personal note I would like to thank PokerNetwork and Bet 24/7 for giving me the chance to jump back in the blogging saddle . . . and hopefully it leads to some more opportunities down the track.

Aussie Millions Opening Event
Aaron Wilt, Peter Aristidou, Champion Matthew Ephraums, Jarred Graham, Brendan Edmonds, Con Tsapkounis, Dan Carter, Vincent Wan