tilted behaviour

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.

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

Today marked the end of the third flight from Event 1 of the 2010 Aussie Millions!

Like previous years, the poker extravaganza that is the Aussie Millions kicked off with the $1,100 Opening Event that has seen record increases in attendance over the past few years; and 2010’s case was no exception!

A total of 1,143 entrants created the epic $1,143,000 prizepool thanks to a mixture of 919 unique entrants and 224 who repechaged.

When the dust settled on Day 1c, 193 players had made it through with many big-name local players, amateurs and international guests all having seats for action tomorrow.

As most of you know by now I was working the event on behalf of PokerNetwork and Bet 24/7, and if you want to catch the updates as I saw it, then click the links below.

Event 1 Day 1a
Event 1 Day 1b
Event 1 Day 1c

With work wrapped up around 9pm, I decided to join the PokerPro tables with Garry, Chris and Heath.

The tables were full so I decided to jump on the newly located $15 Squeeze Baccarat table that they had moved to sit nearby the PokerPro tables.

Buying in for $400 I slowly grinded up some profit before Brendon Rubie decided to join me for some degenerate gambling action. After explaining the rules he decided just to bet whatever I bet, but couldn’t really get a handle on the art that is squeezing!

At my high point I was up around $200, but left satisfied with $175 profit as Brendon had easily doubled his $100 buy-in before we both moved to the PokerPro tables.

Since Heath, Chris and Garry all had in excess of $300 – well apart from Heath who had around $200 – I decided to short-stack it to increase the fun factor and bought in for $20 on the $1-2 NLH PokerPro table that they were playing.

Those buy-in’s went fairly quickly – and from what I can remember – Kings vs Ace-King (all in on turn, river Ace) and against Chris as we shoved dark, my K♦ Q♣ went down to his 9♠ 5♣ when the board ran out A♦ Q♦ 6♦ 5♠ 5♥.

Consequently I decided to take it seriously after dropping a quick $100, and bought in for the full $100 amount. I quickly chipped up to $150 when I made two-pair and then just slowly took down pots every orbit to hit a high-point of $320 before making a move on Chris.

He made it $7 under the gun with 3♠ 4♠ and I three-bet to $23 with A♣ 9♠. The button called and so did Chris to see a 3♦ 5♥ 3♣ flop land. I bet out $25, the button moved all in for less, and Chris gave me this big talk before making it $75. Obviously he cashed out after that hand with around $500 as me and Heath were soon joined by Elaine once Garry and Brendon had left.

Elaine nitted it up and only lost pots to me when I would three-bet and then continuation bet with 7-3 off etc.

The night finished around 2am with all of us enjoying some play time outside of work!

From: Heath Chick
To: Tim Duckworth

Hey mate,
Are you interested /available in working for PNW covering Event #1 of the Aussie Millions?

After getting shot this email from Heath the three letters of Y-E-S have never been typed faster as I was on the verge of my first live work since early October.

I have been doing articles and re-writes for PokerNetwork, but nothing beats getting back into the swing of things and working on the tournament floor as a blogger.

I haven’t been explained all the details regarding the event, but I will be working for PokerNetwork doing live coverage of Event 1 of the Aussie Millions (beginning in a week’s time) on behalf of the website Bet 24/7.

Hopefully my coverage will KICK SOME ASS . . . but only you can be the judge!