2011 Aussie Millions Raises the High-Stakes Bar

How do you get top poker players to travel thousands of miles on a flight that lasts more than a dozen hours? The fact that the players in question will travel from winter into summer is helpful, and a tournament location in a world-class city doesn’t hurt, but the real reason that the biggest names in poker travel to Melbourne, Australia, each January has to do with the huge stakes they can play for during the Aussie Millions tournament series at the Crown Casino.

The Aussie Millions has become a high-stakes tournament destination that top players like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan never miss. The Crown Casino provides the top players in the world a high-stakes playground. Whether the chips are flying in the Crown’s Mahogany Room or the action is being filmed in high-stakes cash games and tournaments in Studio 3, the poker world has voiced its approval by buying in for millions of dollars throughout the tournament series.

Poker professionals have been leaping across the Pacific from their home bases in Las Vegas and Los Angeles to attend the Aussie Millions for the last couple of years now, and thanks to increased high-stakes cash-game action in Macau that is driven by a number of high rollers from the world of business, the long flight has become a familiar one for poker’s elite.

In addition to the $100,000 Challenge and $250,000 super high-roller events, a televised high-stakes cash game took place on two separate days in Studio 3. The first day featured a $500-$1,000 no-limit hold’em cash game with a $100,000 minimum buy-in, and it included Ivey, Dwan, Patrik Antonius, John Juanda, Eli Elezra, and Macau high rollers Wang Qiang, Richard Yong, and Paul Phua. After about five hours of play, Phua busted Ivey, and the three gentlemen from Macau left the game, along with Juanda. The table was then reloaded with Sam Trickett, David Benyamine, Justin Smith, Daniel Cates, and Andrew Feldman.

Day 2 welcomed back Antonius, Dwan, Smith, Feldman, and Benyamine, and added Mike Matusow, Erik Cajelais, and David Oppenheim. The game was $400-$800 no-limit hold’em with a $100,000 minimum buy-in. Ivey, Trickett, James Bord, and Chris Ferguson also stopped by throughout the day, as millions of dollars traded hands amongst the top professionals.

With the millions of dollars flying around daily, it almost overshadowed the $10,000 no-limit hold’em main event that everyone had come to play in the first place. That tournament attracted 721 players, and boasted the largest prize pool of the tournament series, more than $7 million.

The main-event field included the top professionals in the game, but many of them would find their way back to the high-stakes live action after they busted out. Antonius made the final table, but even the $130,000 in prize money that he won for his eighth-place finish was less than a $435,000 pot that he won with pocket aces a few days earlier during a high-stakes cash game.

In the end, the main event proved that the beauty of poker is that at the same time that professionals are winning millions of dollars, an amateur can claim a million-dollar payday under the same roof. The Aussie Millions champion was David Gorr, a 68-year-old grandfather from Melbourne, Australia. He didn’t capture his $2 million first-place prize by winning a couple of huge pots at crazy stakes; he earned it the “old-fashioned” way, by being the last man standing at the end of five long days of tournament poker that tested him both physically and mentally.

Card Player was down under for the Aussie Millions, so read on for a recap of the biggest buy-in tournament in poker history, and other Aussie high-roller action. ♠

Erik Seidel Wins

Biggest Buy-in Poker Tournament of All Time at Aussie

Millions

Players’ appetites for high-stakes poker action was almost insatiable at the 2011 Aussie Millions. The $100,000 Challenge attracted 38 players, and every day after that, high-stakes cash games were hosted in Studio 3, the epicenter of high-stakes poker at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. As millions of dollars changed hands, rumors persisted about the biggest buy-in poker tournament of all time coming together. At first, the question was whether or not there would be enough players willing to post the $250,000 buy-in to create a single-table tournament of eight players.

The usual suspects were mentioned, with Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and Patrik Antonius in the building, and many were counting on the high rollers from Macau to play, as well. In the end, the tournament came together, and in another affirmation of the Crown Casino’s ability to host some of the largest poker tournaments on the planet, an astounding 20 players bought in for $250,000 each, creating a prize pool of $5 million.

The list of players who participated was impressive. It included Ivey, Dwan, John Juanda, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel, David Benyamine, Andrew Feldman, Nikolay Evdakov, Annette Obrestad, Roland De Wolfe, and James Bord. The lineup was bolstered further by recent $100,000 Challenge winner Sam Trickett, young professionals Daniel Cates, Eugene Katchalov, and James Obst, former Aussie Millions champions Tony Bloom and Alexander Kostritsyn, and Macau high rollers Wang Qiang, Richard Yong, and Paul Phua.

Buried like a diamond in the rough amongst those names was the only player among them who is a member of the Poker Hall of Fame, and despite that fact, no one was picking him to win the tournament. Once again, however, Erik Seidel proved why he is probably the most underrated player in the history of the game, as he added another achievement to his resume by winning the biggest buy-in poker tournament of all time.

Despite the insane price of admission, players were busting out of the tournament at a very fast clip. Obst was the first player to fall, and six players fell during the first six 30-minute levels. The energy level was very high amongst these players, who are usually quite subdued. The enthusiasm that $10,000 buy-in tournaments fail to inspire amongst these action junkies was clearly visible with all that was at stake. The final table of nine was reached in just a few hours, as the heightened level of enthusiasm drove the pace of play.

Final Table
| Seat 1 | David Benyamine — 259,500 |
| Seat 2 | Nikolay Evdakov — 428,000 |
| Seat 3 | Sam Trickett — 1,219,500 |
| Seat 4 | Phil Ivey — 186,000 |
| Seat 5 | Erik Seidel — 619,000 |
| Seat 6 | Andrew Feldman — 423,500 |
| Seat 7 | Richard Yong — 313,500 |
| Seat 8 | Chris Ferguson — 860,000 |
| Seat 9 | Wang Qiang — 623,000 |

The action had been brisk for most of the day in this event, but once the nine finalists took their seats at the final table, it moved up another gear. Benyamine and Yong doubled up, but then the flood gates opened. Evdakov lost a race to fall in ninth place, and then Ivey was eliminated in another race just 10 minutes later, to finish eighth. Ten minutes after that, Feldman was all in with pocket nines, but lost to Benyamine’s pocket kings.

The next 20 minutes saw three more eliminations. Ferguson fell in sixth place when his set of deuces lost to the set of fives held by Trickett. Yong then lost a race with A-Q against the pocket tens of his colleague Qiang. With four players remaining, there was millions in prize money on the line, but that didn’t stop Qiang from playing fast and loose.

He moved all in preflop with the 3♥ 2♦, and Trickett snap-called with pocket aces. Qiang was laughing as the board came 9♥ 7♠ 2♠ 6♣ 10♥, and he was eliminated in fourth place. Watching Qiang exit the stage, though, you had the sneaking suspicion that the biggest feather in his cap for the day was that he lasted longer than both of his Macau cohorts, Yong and Phua — both monetarily, thanks to some side bets, and, more importantly, as a matter of pride; when you have as much money as those three gentleman have, pride is priceless.

That left three extremely talented players to battle it out for the top prize of $2.5 million and the title of champion of the biggest buy-in tournament in poker history. Trickett had a big lead, with 3 million, while both Seidel and Benyamine hovered around 1 million each. Both Benyamine and Seidel doubled up through Trickett in succession, but Trickett regained control by eliminating Benyamine in third place.

Trickett raised to 60,000 preflop, and Benyamine made the call. The flop came A♦ 10♠ 8♣, and Benyamine checked. Trickett bet 85,000, and Benyamine check-raised to 235,000. Trickett made the call, and the turn was the A♠. Benyamine bet 300,000, and Trickett moved all in after spending some time in the tank. Benyamine called, flipped over the A♣ 6♣, and was ahead of the A♥ 4♠ of Trickett until the 4♥ fell on the river, eliminating the Full Tilt pro.

That gave Trickett 4,196,000 heading into heads-up play against Seidel. The eight-time World Series gold bracelet winner had just 804,000 when heads-up play began, and while other players might have panicked, Seidel just dug in and started to chip away at the lead. Once he scored a quick double-up, Seidel began to gain on his young adversary, winning multiple pots in a row as Trickett’s lead began to shrink.

Trickett was used to the pressure; he had just won the $100,000 Challenge a few days before this heads-up final, and on that day, he defeated Seidel, who finished in third place, but this time around, Trickett made a costly error that gave Seidel the victory in the end. After about an hour of heads-up play, Trickett attempted to raise 500,000 on the river of a Q-J-9-K-8 board with three diamonds, and he didn’t have that much remaining in his stack. In any event, Seidel folded, but after the hand, Trickett admitted that he had thought his 20-chip stacks of grey chips were worth 100,000. They were actually worth 20,000, and he then revealed that he would have played differently if he had realized that.

A few minutes later, it was all over for Trickett, as Seidel had completed his comeback to win the tournament. On the final hand, Trickett raised to 175,000 preflop, and Seidel made the call. The flop was 9♥ 5♥ 3♠, and Trickett checked. Seidel bet 150,000, and Trickett raised all in. Seidel called with the J♥ 9♣. Trickett was behind with the A♠ Q♥, and after the K♣ and 10♦ fell on the turn and the river, the tournament had its champion.

Seidel won the $2.5 million AUD

first-place prize, and his first tournament win of the year came at his fourth final table. Just four days before this win, Seidel took third place in the $100,000 Challenge. His two other final tables came at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, where he finished fourth in the $25,000 high-roller event and third in the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha championship. That run makes him the leading money winner of the new year, with $3,457,267, and Trickett is in second place, with $3,018,736, thanks to the $1.4 million AUD that he took home as the runner-up in this event.

“This is just unbelievable; it has been one thing after another this month, it’s crazy. These things usually happen to somebody else,” said Seidel after the win. “I think I would rather have this than a bracelet; $2.5 million is pretty sweet. I feel like it was a really special, really incredible day. What’s so amazing about this is starting the day losing $250,000, and just a few hours later, you’re worth $2.5 million. It’s really fun to do that in the course of a day; nobody has had that experience before.”

This year is already the most profitable of Seidel’s career, which spans more than two decades, and he is climbing the ranks on yet another career-achievement list. The man who is fifth on the career WSOP gold bracelet list now has $13,758,849 in career tournament earnings, which puts him less than $250,000 behind the leader, Daniel Negreanu.

Poker is a rare game, in that a player can add to his resume well after he has been inducted into its Hall of Fame. Everyone knew that Seidel belonged among the greatest players in the game, but now he appears ready to stake his claim as the most successful player in tournament poker history. ♠

Rising High-Stakes Star Sam Trickett Wins Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge

Sam Trickett started 2011 by winning more than $3 million in tournaments in January. That more than doubled the career tournament earnings of this young professional from England. He now has $4,577,667 in career tournament earnings, and has won even more than that in high-stakes cash games all over the world. The 24-year-old won the $100,000 Challenge at the Aussie Millions, and finished second there to Erik Seidel in the $250,000 super high-roller event.

Read on to learn a bit more about this rising star, his start in the game, and how he claimed the biggest victory of his young career.

Bad Luck Leads to a Good Career Choice

“I wanted to be a professional footballer; that was my goal when I was younger. I was a semipro when I was 17, and then I tore my anterior cruciate ligament in my knee and couldn’t play. I was like, wow, what do I do now? All of my hopes were on doing that for a living,” said Trickett of the life-altering event that led him to poker.

Trickett was lucky, in that he was a quick study in the endeavor he turned to in order to satisfy his competitive hunger. He had started to become a registered engineer for a year as he was trying to get into poker, but then found success in the game, and his new career path was clear.

“I started out playing live, unlike most players, who start out online. I started out playing in the casinos in the £50 tournaments, and if I lost, I would have a go in the cash games, so I learned by playing both. I took a chance in bigger tournaments once I got some decent results early on in my career, and things have taken off from there. Once I got some really good results in tournaments, I started playing in cash games more,” said Trickett of his early days in poker.

His preference for live play has been beneficial to him, and has made him a bit of an outlier among young players, who prefer to play for high stakes online. “I’ve always been a decent live cash-game player. Online, I’m not so good. I break even or win a little. I don’t really crush online, because I don’t put enough time into it. I can play online, but I love to play live. I get a feel for the hand and get into the hand a lot more, and I feel like I make really good decisions live — better decisions than I make online. For now, I’m going to stick to live play,” said Trickett. It has been a profitable decision so far, and it looks like it will continue to be one for the foreseeable future.

The Culmination of High-Stakes Cash-Game and Tournament Experience

Trickett spent his time wisely leading up to the 2011 Aussie Millions, considering that high-stakes tournaments and cash-game action were the main focus in Melbourne. “This is the first tournament I’ve played in three or four months. I’ve been playing in lots of high-stakes cash games, and have been doing really well,” said Trickett at the start of the $100,000 Challenge in Studio 3, which became the focal point for all of the high-stakes action in Australia.

He scored a quick double-up on day 1 of the tournament, thanks to a flopped two pair against the straight draw of Macau high-stakes cash-game player Wang Qiang. Trickett won the hand to increase his stack to 245,000, and he played well throughout the day to end the night with the chip lead, 961,000. “I’m relieved, and I wish every tournament was like that. Coming right out of the blocks into the chip lead, I never really looked back after that today,” said Trickett.

The cash games in which Trickett had played to end 2010 gave him valuable experience against players like Qiang. “Just before Christmas, I played in some big cash games there [Macau], probably four or five sessions, and then went home for Christmas, spent some time with the family, and went back to play some more. So now I’m really friendly with all of the guys over there. I have a good relationship with them. I played another five or six sessions, and did well, so I hope that may continue. The stakes were $650-$1,300 blinds, sometimes with a straddle, sometimes not,” said Trickett of his experience with the fabled action in Macau.

Despite starting the final table with the chip lead, things began roughly for Trickett, and although he survived to three-handed play, he had the shortest stack left in the contest after high-stakes tournament specialist David Steicke exited in fourth place. His 350,000 in chips was a million behind Tony Bloom, and he was well behind the 2.1 million of chip leader Erik Seidel.

Small-ball poker took over at that point of the tournament, which played right into Trickett’s plan. “I normally play a bit more aggressively three-handed, and try to play bigger pots to put lots of pressure on my opponents, but I didn’t feel like that was the right strategy in this format. I tried to play small-ball poker, with a lot of pot control, which I haven’t been doing too much in the last six months. I just felt like that was the right strategy. When I made some hands, I got paid off, and I ran really good,” said Trickett.

Trickett also doubled up when he needed to, and the combination of good luck and sound strategy put him in the driver’s seat when heads-up action began. “I got lucky at the right times at the final table, especially three-handed. It was my time to win this,” said Trickett. He had 2,455,000 against Bloom’s 1,345,000 after Seidel busted out in third place.

Only one hand involved both players flipping over their cards during the short heads-up final, and it came on the final hand of the tournament. Bloom was all in preflop with the Q♦ 9♦, and Trickett had him covered with the A♥ K♦. The board ran out 8♥ 3♣ 2♣ 8♣ 4♣, and Trickett won the title and $1,525,000 AUD.

Looking Ahead While Making Wise Investments

“I had a great year last year, and this year has started even better than last year, so while I’m happy and enjoying myself, I’m just going to keep playing poker. I bought a lot of property, so I’m going to keep investing in property. I’m comfortable now, and everything is going well,” said Trickett after the biggest victory of his tournament career.

He has a good head on his shoulders at the poker tables, and credits a close friend for helping him find a way to put his poker winnings to good use away from the tables. “My friend James has been a big part of my life. I kind of went broke in 2009 after being immature and irresponsible with my money, so I went to Cape Town and worked with him for a little while. He has acted as a big brother in the last year or two, and has helped me get back on my feet. He won’t let me spend any money unless it’s on an investment, so I’m pretty safe on that side of things,” said Trickett.

When Trickett was asked about his plans for the rest of the year, he seemed to favor a mixed approach, given his recent success in both the tournament and cash-game arenas. “I’m doing well in cash games, so I’m going to keep playing in them. And I am going to play in the bigger buy-in tournaments. I also will go to nice places in the world, like Australia, and enjoy life,” said Trickett. “I’ll play the bigger buy-in tournaments in order to establish some success in tournaments, and obviously will play at the World Series.” ♠