By Landon Blackhall

When a poker tournament is in its early stages, we tend write items to describe the ambience and atmosphere of the room, the general action on the tables; even the odd weird and wonderful hands we witness, as long as we're in the right place at the right time. These are what we call "colour pieces", however, this piece is literally about colours!

Perth's Max s0stndrd Veenhuyzen (trivia: he was the first Aussie to win the Sunday Million on PokerStars) was involved in a big pot earlier with Ravindran Maravar, finding himself calling down an all-in player holding pocket aces. "I don't feel so bad now," Maravar said as he turned over his pocket jacks.

However, Veenhuyzen found himself behind after the [Js] [5h] [8h] appeared on the flop! The turn of [4s] and river of [ks] were of no help to Veenhuyzen, leaving Maravar to double up while he was left to stack up his remaining 6625 in chips - one of every colour of the rainbow.

The colourful chips used at Star City are just one of the many quirks of playing poker at Sydney's only casino. Those who've followed our reporting from previous events here will know that dealers use a cutdown version of a blackjack shoe from which to deal the cards, players are penalised for acting out of turn and iPods are a no-no (the ANZPT receives a special exemption on this rule, that is until the bubble bursts).

Meanwhile the remaining 197 entrants have entered the fourth level of the day (100/200 blinds with a 25 ante). This has seen the rate of eliminations increase slightly, but given the generous tournament structure, we predict that by the end of the day's play there will still be a approximately 100 players progressing to day two from today's field.

It has been announced by the tournament director that there will be a 50-minute dinner break at 7pm AEST. Did I hear someone say Garden Buffet?