Tournament Trail

Australian Poker in the Post-Hachem Era
The Growth of Poker Down Under Takes Center Stage at the Aussie Millions


Late on a Saturday night in July 2005, the poker room at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia, was packed. All 27 tables were filled to the brim, and the waiting list was an hour long. That same day in Las Vegas, Joe Hachem was playing at the final table of the World Series of Poker main event. Each big pot that he won or lost was relayed from CardPlayer.com to the poker room by Jonno Pittock, director of tournament operations at the Crown. Hachem won the heads-up battle against Steve Dannenmann just before midnight in Australia, and when it was announced to the crowd that he was the new world champion, "the group just went ballistic," Pittock recalls. "It was unbelievable … the emotion in the room; people were crying, and they were on the phone. When he came back, overnight he became this instant celebrity."

Hachem wasn't responsible for starting the poker growth in Australia, as the game was catching on around the continent in the years leading up to his victory. The Aussie Millions featured its first $10,000 buy-in main event in 2003, which attracted enough local and international players for the prize pool to break $1 million. The following year, another boost was given to poker in Australia when the World Poker Tour began to air in one of the most favorable broadcast slots in the country, right after Australian Rules football, and the action on the felt quickly found an audience with the sport-loving Aussies. "At that stage, we were running 'learn to play' campaigns and trying to walk people onto the table … once it came on the TV, everyone started coming in and asking about that game on TV," said Pittock.

So, when Hachem became the first Australian poker player to win a world championship, he was the catalyst for a poker boom down under. "The reality is that my win was the same as the [Chris] Moneymaker win in the States. Just explosion, not even growth, just absolute explosion," said Hachem. "Australians love this sport, and as a whole, we're very, very competitive. For a country of not that many people, look how well we compete at the Olympics against some of the biggest countries in the world. People love poker because it brings out their competitive spirit."


Grass-roots Boom

Australia lacked the number of cardrooms and casinos that are present across the U.S., so it needed to grow on a grass-roots level. This is when a number of pub poker leagues began to sprout up all over the country to grow the game. Late in 2005, a group of casino employees from Sydney began an amateur pub poker league called the Australian Poker League, and it caught on quickly. "What happened with the pub market is that all of a sudden, it went bang. They launched this league, and three or four months later, there were 200-300 pubs in Sydney that had poker. About six months after that, they launched into the Victorian market," said Pittock. Other leagues, like the National Poker League, were started, and a breeding ground for cash games and tournaments took hold.

The growth of pub leagues and broadcasting poker as competition have helped to embed poker into a culture that long ago adopted gambling. Along with the proliferation of slot machines across the country (the most, per capita, in the world), the Melbourne Cup horse race has fostered a long history of betting on the ponies among Aussies. Race results fill local sports pages, and the annual Cup race in November brings the nation to a halt.

While the local poker market grew from pub to pub across the continent, the Aussie Millions experienced large growth, as well, and it has become a prime destination on the international tournament trail. The size of the Aussie Millions main event peaked in 2008, when 780 players made it the fifth-largest poker tournament ever hosted outside the United States. The tournament series also has added a collection of intriguing preliminary events to lure players down to the Southern Hemisphere. These events include a $5,000 buy-in heads-up tournament, a $100,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em challenge, and for the first time, a million-dollar cash game in 2009.

The groundwork for the future of poker in Australia has already begun to take form. PokerStars began to venture into the Aussie poker market two years ago with an Asia Pacific Poker Tour stop in Sydney in 2007 that served as the final event of its inaugural season. In January of 2009, PokerStars announced the beginning of the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour, which already has held one tournament in Adelaide, and has others scheduled for Sydney, and Queenstown, New Zealand. Crown Casino also may become a stop on the ANZPT, but it already hosts other large events during the year, including the Victorian Championships and the Melbourne Poker Championships.

"My hope is that I can see poker grow in Australia to a level where it is an accepted sport; where that backroom aura is gone; where people understand that they can come and play poker and it's not about losing their shirt, it's about competing and being social at the same time," said Hachem. "You can play and try to win millions of dollars, or you can play with your friends and play for a pizza."

The future for Australian poker looks bright, and you don't have to look beyond the Crown poker room to see how far things have come since that July night in 2005. The poker room was once again filled to the brim during the 2009 Aussie Millions, but now there are 64 tables to fill, multiple tournaments running, and still a pretty long wait on the interest list.


Stewart Scott Wins the 2009 Aussie Millions Main Event

At the start of the 2009 Aussie Millions main event, Joe Hachem issued a challenge to the Australians in attendance: It was time for a local to win the event. One player in the crowd took that challenge to heart.

The final table of the main event included a few Aussies, along with professionals Barny Boatman and Peter Rho, who returned to stake their claim on a first-place prize of $2,000,000 AUD four days after Hachem's challenge. The final eight had fought through a field of 681 players, and Australian Stewart Scott came to the final table with the chip lead.

Play was slow at the start, and Boatman took advantage. He increased his stack early, but he eventually became the first player to fall, in eighth place ($100,000 AUD). Richard Ashby was the second player to hit the rail; he fell a short time after Boatman, in seventh place ($150,000 AUD). After the players returned from an early dinner break, it wasn't too long until back-to-back eliminations struck again. First, Zach Gruneberg departed in sixth place ($210,000 AUD), and he was followed by a short-stacked Sam Capra, who busted out in fifth place ($300,000 AUD).

After that flurry of activity, eliminations came few and far between. A battle took place during four-handed action that finally saw the fall of Rajkumar Ramakrishnan in fourth place ($400,000 AUD). An even longer battle ensued after that, and the action charged late into the night three-handed. Shortly before midnight, Elliot Smith finally succumbed. He had doubled up multiple times during the final table to make a deep run, earning a hard-fought third-place finish ($700,000 AUD). The heads-up battle was much shorter between Scott and Rho. It lasted just 13 hands, as Scott held pocket aces and they held up to eliminate Rho in second place ($1,000,000 AUD). Scott became the first Australian champion of the Aussie Millions main event. He was awarded $2,000,000 AUD and a gold bracelet for the historic win.