Aussie Millions -- Erik Seidel Wins $250,000 Super High Roller

You would think that with a buy-in of a quarter of a million dollars that things would play out slow and deliberately at the 2011 Aussie Millions $250,000 Super High Roller event at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. The reality of the situation was quite the opposite. Players had just 30 seconds to act in the event, with two 30-second time breaker buttons to allow them more time when they requested it. They received an additional time breaker button upon making the final table, but these aides were rarely used.

Preflop shoves ruled the day as some of the best poker players in the world and rich businessman from Macau were looking for big action in Studio 3 as they made poker history. There were 20 of them who bought into the event, creating a $5 million dollar prize pool. Cards got into the air just before 1 p.m. local time so everyone was expecting a long, long day to play down to one champion who would bank a $2.5 million payday.

Action played out at a medium pace during the opening stages of the day, and many of the biggest names in poker were lost during the play down from the original 20 to the final table of nine players, including James Obst, James Bord, Tom Dwan, Roland de Wolfe, Alexander Kostritsyn, John Juanda, Eugene Katchalov, Annette Obrestad, Tony Bloom, Paul Phua, and Daniel Cates.

Here is a look at the counts when the finalists took their seats at the final table:

Seat 1: David Benyamine — 258,500
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 Young — 313,500
Seat 8: Chris Ferguson — 860,000
Seat 9: Wang Qiang — 623,000

Evdakov fell in ninth place after an hour of play at the final table, but only the top three spots in the field would receive prize money. After the elimination of Evdakov at the hands of Sam Trickett the flood gates opened and Phil Ivey (eighth), Andrew Feldman (seventh), Chris Ferguson (sixth), Richard Young (fifth), and Wang Qiang (fourth) fell in the next 40 minutes, taking the tournament on an insanely fast trip down to the final three players and the prize money.

Trickett was responsible for much of the mayhem during this stretch, eliminating four of the six players who fell during the bustout bonanza. He took 3.2 million into heads-up play against the 1 million of David Benyamine and the 700,000 of Erik Seidel. It wasn’t long before he scored a fifth elimination at the final table. Trickett moved all in with the board showing A 10 8 A and Benyamine made the call. Their cards:

Trickett: A 4
Benyamine: A 6

River: 4!

Trickett hit the 4 on the river to come from behind and win the hand. Benyamine was eliminated in third place and he took home $1 million. This gave Trickett (4,196,000) an even larger chip advantage heading into the heads-up final against Seidel (804,000). Most players would be crippled psychologically facing that big of an obstacle at the start of heads-up play, but Seidel showed the confidence of a veteran poker professional and started to fight back.

He scored a quick double up to give himself some chips to work with and then he started to chip away at Trickett, not only taking the chip lead, but reversing their positions as the dominant chip leader, and the short stack who needed to double up to survive. Trickett was almost down to a million when the final hand in the tournament transpired. Seidel limped on the button and Trickett raised to 175,000. Seidel made the call and the flop was dealt 9 5 3. Trickett checked and Seidel bet 150,000. Trickett then moved all in and Seidel made the call. Their cards:

Trickett: A Q
Seidel: J 9

Turn and River: K and 10

That made Seidel the champion at the $250,000 Super High Roller event at the Aussie Millions. He adds $2.5 million AUD to his career earnings for the victory, which now stand at an impressive $13,758,849 in prize money (second all time). Trickett was eliminated in second place and he was awarded the runner-up prize worth $1.5 million AUD after it looked like he would run away with the title at one time. It was still an impressive week for Trickett, who won the $100,000 challenge just a few days ago here in Melbourne.

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