So the World Series is underway, the biggest poker series in the world taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada. Outside the 100 degree heat of the desert turns people into card board, while inside the ferocious air conditioning puts frost in your veins. It's something every poker player should...more
"There are people counting on me." Brad Willis reports on another flash back to World Series's of yore... I remember Barry Greenstein saying that to me a few years back. It was so antithetical to the well-established poker mindset, it was hard to fit in my head. If you ask...more
With the 40th World Series kicking off this week in Las Vegas it's a good time to look back on a few moments caught by members of the PokerStars blog team over the last few years, as Brad Willis reports... There is a live version of the Eagles' Take...more
The history of Aussie poker is intrinsically linked with Crown Casino. The nation's largest gaming property has been the backdrop for some of the pivotal moments in local poker folklore. From the first Australasian Championships back in 1998 (played as a $1000 buy-in Limit Hold'em event) to the first...more
Level 22: 12,000/24,000 (ante 3000): Like a heavyweight title fight, there have been plenty of body shots and just one KO blow during the final level before the dinner break on the final table of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne at Crown. Heath Chick made a significant move when he...more
Level 21: 10,000/20,000 (ante 2000): Chris Levick seems firmly saddled on a horse called destiny after taking his stack back above one million thanks to two pivotal hands at the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne final table. Shortly after the first break of the day, Levick found himself in a big...more
Level 20: 8000/16,000 (ante 2000): One Tasmanian may have tumbled, but the other Apple Islander is ensuring he has a big say in the outcome of today's PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne final table. In the biggest hand of the day so far, Heath Chick raised to 28k in middle position,...more
Level 19: 6000/12,000 (ante 1000): After losing the first hand of the final table to Ben Savage, Chris Levick quickly made amends by claiming the first scalp of the day in the chase for the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne title. Nursing the short stack, Rodney Burles raised to 30,000, Levick...more
Seat 1: Heath Chick (Australia) PokerStars Qualifier (283,000 in chips): His role in the local poker media has meant this Tasmanian has had little time to ply his trade on the felt. But given this opportunity, the "Tassie Devil" has rarely been out of the top 10 stacks in...more
The office crowd may be kicking back for a leisurely lunch - you know, sushi rolls, a couple of soy decaf lattes - but it's peak-hour in the Crown poker room in the half-hour before the start of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne final table. A handful of the contenders...more
What we thought might be a short and sharp sprint to the final table turned into a marathon battle of wit and will before the final table was decided for the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne tournament. More than 13 hours after the first hand was dealt to the 69 players...more
We're in the money at Crown where John Joannou has earned the unwanted title of bubble boy in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne event. The last of his dwindling stack went in with A♦ 8♠, Jie Gao slammed over the top all-in with A♠ Q♠. Sam Khouiss thought before folding...more
Having devoured our body weight in risotto, we're back for what promises to be a dramatic evening session on day two of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne event. After an extremely tense level 15 in which only two players were eliminated, the moves are now coming thick and fast with...more
By Landon Blackhall The inaugural season of the PokerStars.net ANZPT has already produced some fantastic stories - Karl Krautschneider's first major tournament victory from out of the shadows of the poker giants who shared the final table; and Paren Arzoomanian's triumph in Sydney in the wake of his cancer...more
Much is made of the rivalry between Australia's biggest cities Melbourne and Sydney. Nowhere more is the difference between the cities reflected than in Australia's two most popular soap operas. Home and Away is archetypically Sydney - set in the idyllic Summer Bay where the sun shines everyday, the...more
We're getting down to the business end of things here at Crown Casino with only 33 players in contention of the 218 who started the chase for the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne title. In the last level, we saw Andy Meldrum, Michael Guzzardi, Sam Youssef, John Apostolidis, Mario Doria, Jimmy...more
By Landon Blackhall and Sean Callander The PokerStars.net Team Australia challenge is down to one after the elimination of 2007 APPT Grand Final winner Grant Levy from the ANZPT Melbourne field. Levy's 4♠ 4♥ was counterfeited when Tino Lechich's A♠ J♠ played on a board of Q♦ 5♦ 9♣...more
By Landon Blackhall and Sean Callander We're used to hearing crap from poker players, but the smell from a burst sewerage pipe that is wafting through the Crown poker room is adding a whole new challenge for the remaining 52 players in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne event. But our...more
Players are beginning to file into the Crown poker room for the start of day two in the battle for the first PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne title. Sparked by a latte or two and hearty breakfast at one of the many riverside restaurants here at Crown, the 69 remaining players...more
By Landon Blackhall and Sean Callander It was a day of firsts at Crown - the first time a PokerStars.net tour event was played in Melbourne; a rare Monday tournament start and a player came from the clouds to snatch the chip lead in the final two hands. The...more
By Landon Blackhall Things are never predictable in poker. Chatting with two of the PokerStars qualifiers in today's ANZPT Melbourne field (whose names we didn't immediately recognise), we expected to find a couple of tournament poker greenhorns. Instead, we found genuine players with plenty of online experience under their...more
"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," was a piece of sage advice passed from Vito Corleone to his youngest son Michael. It could have also been written for PokerStars.net Team Australia duo Eric Assadourian and Emad Tahtouh, who'd spent much of the day seated next to each...more
By Landon Blackhall and Sean Callander As we tick down to the dinner break on day one of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne event with 144 of the 218 starters still in contention, players are starting to make their dinner plans. Readers of this blog will recall our fondness for...more
We're going to resist the temptation to make a lousy gag about the luck of the Irish at the expense of Sean O'Reilly. Instead, let's give credit where credit is due for the guy who has smashed the field in the early going on day one of the PokerStars.net...more
Crown has played a pivotal role in establishing such a strong poker presence in Australia. Well before Crown signed Team PokerStars Pro Joe Hachem as its poker ambassador in the wake of his 2005 WSOP Main Event triumph, poker has been played at Australia's largest casino. Today's players can...more
The field for the first PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne event has been confirmed at 218, and already 12 of those players have been sent to the rail after the opening two levels of play. The top 18 players will share a slice of the AUD $545,000 prizepool, with the winner...more
By Landon Blackhall and Sean Callander PokerStars.net ANZPT points leader and Team Australia member Tony Hachem has just given the order to shuffle up and deal for day one of the AUD $2700 ANZPT Melbourne event. There are a few cases of 'Mondayitis' in the Crown poker room today...more
Melbourne, Australia - it's one of the great sporting cities; it's home to Crown, one of the world's premier casinos; and it's the hometown of 2005 WSOP Main Event winner and Team PokerStars Pro Joe Hachem. Throw those elements into the blender and it's hardly surprising to find that...more
Brad Willis reports on a PokerStars player who blows stuff up and has a keen eye for a good photo... Captain Wes Deaver blows stuff up. He pilots one of the most famous aircraft in the world. He's flown more than 100 combat missions in Iraq. He's done two...more
One tour ends, another carries on, as PokerStars reports from The Russian capital... If you happened to be a patriotic Russian looking to support a local player at a big poker tournament, then Moscow yesterday was the place to be. All nine players at the successful PokerStars Russian Poker...more
As summer approaches it means the end to another season of the European Poker Tour. But while keen eyes turn towards Las Vegas and the looming World Series it's worth having a look back over season five's winners, each owning stiking talent and each likely to head to Vegas...more
As the summer arrives thoughts turn to Las Vegas and the World Series. It's one of poker's big questions - just how do you go about winning the World Series Main Event, ahead of a field of thousands of players? Well, luckily enough PokerStars has a few World Champions...more
It's been quite a last two weeks in the world of PokerStars and particularly on the PokerStars Blogs with tournaments played on one side of the planet and the other. At the heart of the action was the Italian and French Riviera's, a strip of luxury real estate on...more
The title of Australian poker capital has been shipped around numerous cities over the past 30 years. It started at Australia's first casino in Hobart, Tasmania, then settled in Adelaide during the late 1980s and 1990s, briefly adopted Canberra before setting up shop in Melbourne. However, a new challenger...more
Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Rousso already had more than $1.3 million in tournament winnings when she arrived in Monte Carlo. She hardly needed to prove her ability to the poker world, but if there's one thing that cements a place among the game's great and the good, then winning a...more
By Howard Swains We have clocked more than 13,000 miles on the European Poker Tour this season, crowning 11 champions in cities from Barcelona to the Bahamas, Deauville to Dortmund. And as the curtain comes down tonight on a season that shattered all previous records, the man with the...more
We're down to the final two in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event, with Lisa Walsh narrowly trailing Paren Arzoomanian for the title. Chris Kittos busted in fourth spot after he came out on the wrong end of a race against Walsh. It was 3♣ 3♥ against A♥ K♠...more
Players have just returned from a 10-minute break (with the exception of Paren "Puzz" Arzoomanian, who obviously needed 15) for the final sprint to the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. That extra rest just proved beneficial as he just doubled through Lisa Walsh to reignite his failing challenge. It...more
Lisa Walsh was poised to write a slice of Aussie poker history after taking a stranglehold on the final table at the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. But as quick as she wins 'em, back they go! Departures have been rapid since the dinner break, with the latest elimination...more
And then there were six. Lisa Walsh looks to be a hurry to get home after claiming the two players to fall since the dinner break on the final day of the PokerStars.net AN ZPT Sydney Main Event. In the first elimination, Walsh started the action with a raise...more
The eight remaining players in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event have headed off on their dinner break. For some, it will be their last supper at the Garden Buffet. And if any of the players choose to launch an attack on the world oyster eating record set by...more
Lisa Walsh Seat 1: Lisa Walsh, Gold Coast, Qld, Australia (1,481,000 in chips): She might be making her first final table tournament appearance, but this 49-year-old mother of six (with her first grandchild on the way) brings plenty of big game experience to the table despite only three years'...more
The final table has been decided for the first PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. The road was paved for the final nine throughout level 24, with the elimination of Marcial Dias setting the tone for a swift reduction in the field. Dias committed his last 125,000 in chips with...more
By Landon Blackhall With little action to report in the past level, we caught up with the man who represented the rest of the world against the Aussie charge. Canadian PokerStars qualifier Robert Acton can take pride in being the last international in the tournament, with his 20th place...more
We're down to two tables in the battle for the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event, and players continue to steadily stream from the tournament area. Eight of the 26 players who started the final day were eliminated during the opening level of the day, with Michael Marvenak out in...more
With such an even spread of chips, it's hardly surprising that the progress has been slow and steady in the early going on the final day of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Only two players were KOed in the first 30 minutes, with Phi L Luu first out...more
Like most other parts of the world, poker has become a younger man's (and woman's) game in Australia. Over the past three years, names like PokerStars.net Team Australia players Grant Levy and Eric Assadourian, James Broom, Dory Zayneh, Stewart Scott, Haibo Chu, Daniel Botta and Luke Santo have topped...more
By Stephen Bartley From Miami John Cernuto to Chris Rossiter - they fell one-by-one on the penultimate day of season five of the EPT. It left us eventually with eight, but nothing today was ever set in stone. Chip leaders became early fallers, while those previously with little hope...more
The stage is set for a gripping finale to the first PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event with 26 players still in contention for the title and the AUD $246,500 first prize. After starting day two with 185 hopefuls, eliminations continued steadily throughout the day until play stonewalled on the...more
Team PokerStars.net Team Australia contingent has been reduced to one - Tony Hachem - after the elimination of Eric Assadourian. With a big rail of friends and family following his progress, Assadourian looked in great shape with pocket aces against the pocket jacks of Chris Kittos, until a heart-breaking...more
Let the carnage begin! A long bubble period is usually followed by some quickfire eliminations, and that's certainly been the case late on day two of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Terry Tserdamis, Taner Durust, Monica Nguyen, Milan Gurung wasted little time collecting their $4437 cheques, while Alexander...more
The never-ending bubble has finally burst and the top 45 players in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event have been decided. It took 12 hands for Sydney-based South African Mark Lasarow to commit his last remaining 1000 chip with K-7, only to find Robert Acton poised with K-Q, and...more
The tension creeps up another notch with blinds up to 4000/8000 with an ante of 500, and we're just four players short of the money in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Main Event. Surprisingly, the action is still running thick and fast with the short stacks forced to make a stand...more
The talk over dinner centred around a bizarre hand late in level 15 that had the entire field crowded around table 22. It's not to explain, but we'll do our best! A player under the gun raised all-in pre-flop holding pocket queens. Another player in late position announced raise,...more
By Landon Blackhall Paren "Puzz" Arzoomanian started day two of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Main Event with just 27,000 in chips, well below the average of 53,000. He's now a massive chip leader after the biggest pot of the tournament. And his unfortunate victim was PokerStars qualifier and former chip...more
The Star City poker room has taken on a surreal atmosphere this afternoon as the race for the money heats-up in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Over the past few days, a bevy of stunning swimwear models have been staying at Star City, culminating in last night's salubrious...more
We're about to tick over the three-hour mark on day two of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event, and already the field has been slashed from 185 to 108 - 53 spots short of the money. In what is set to be a battle of the ages, Eric Assadourian...more
By Landon Blackhall and Sean Callander Monica Nguyen is one of the most popular on the local poker circuit, so it was hardly surprising that her recent double-up in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney was greeted with roars of approval from the rail. At the recent Joe Hachem Deep Stack...more
Working at a poker tournament isn't normally the healthiest environment - lots of late nights, too much junk food and very little exercise. Thankfully, the day-two field in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event have put that last one right, as we've been bolting from one end of the...more
Saturday morning in Sydney - the Darling Harbour craft market is packed, yachts are popping up on Sydney Harbour like a disjointed pattern of cheesecake slices and the sun is bright enough to give a hungover poker player a nasty reminder of Friday night's festivities. Welcome back to Star...more
By Howard Swains Monte Carlo might as well be a million miles from anywhere. Its laws, luxury and extravagance sets it apart even from Luton, and this poker festival at the end of the EPT calendar is like nothing ever seen on the continent. By the strictest rules of...more
Just two days ago, Jai Kemp celebrated victory in the $550 six-handed event as part of the preliminary schedule for the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney. It's said that winning form is good form, and Kemp took that saying to heart on day 1B of the ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Just...more
It's been a horror session for the PokerStars.net Team Australia contingent, with Tony Hachem left to wave the flag late into the evening on day 1B of the ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Emad Tahtouh's stoic battle to survive into day two is over after he disappeared from the chip...more
How much is enough? Players at table 14 clearly have a different concept of "time" as judged by the unusual incident that played out just after the dinner break on day 1B of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. The stragglers were still making their way back to the...more
With less than 30 minutes remaining in level six, poker players start asking themselves the important question - "how in Heaven am I going to push through the Friday night crowd to make it to the free oysters at the Garden Buffet?" We concur; it's going to be elbows...more
By Landon Blackhall The PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event has brought together some of the biggest and best names in poker from Australia and New Zealand. But there is a small contingent of international players who have qualified online and have made their way to Australia in an attempt...more
The shackles are off after a sedate start to day 1B in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Main Event at Star City Casino in Sydney. Less than 30 players had been eliminated in the first three levels, but the cry of "all-in, call" is emanating around the room. The sun is...more
By Landon Blackhall There are lot of animal references in poker - tough players are called sharks, timid players are known as fish and the inexperienced players who get lucky are labelled donkeys. If you hold K-9 off suit, you've got the dog hand, pocket threes are called crabs...more
Matthew Pearson is running hot. The online player known as onmyVplates took down the biggest online tournament win by an Aussie so far in 2009, and has brought similar form to day 1B of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Like so many of Australia's emerging online stars -...more
By Landon Blackhall and Sean Callander Random table draw? The seat allocations have thrown up some intriguing battles today as a capacity field of 260 have started day 1B of the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Joe Hachem Deep Stack High Stakes winner Monica Nguyen, 2008 APPT Grand Final...more
It might be casual Friday for Sydney's CBD crowd, but it's serious business for the 240-plus players expected to take their seats for today's day 1B flight of the PokerStars.net Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) Sydney Main Event. ANZPT chief Danny McDonagh confirmed the field would be at...more
The chips are in the bags and 89 survivors have ordered their first beverage for the evening after an enthralling opening day at the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Main Event. Once again, players turned out in force to support a PokerStars.net sponsored event at Star City. Packed fields have filled...more