The keyword for the second of the day one flights of the ANZPT Adelaide was "calm".
Gone were the satellite winners from the casino - 60 had appeared from a field of 104 yesterday. Today our first player headed home 90 minutes into the day. Yesterday you will recall our first player went on just the second hand.
There were 111 players today, 104 yesterday - each paying $3,000 AUD to create a record poker prize pool for the SKYCITY casino of $586,950. this will make the winner richer to the tune of $170,215.00 AUD. A total of 18 places will be paid, with 18th place paying $5,870.00.
Some players appear to have a little less work than others.
Julius Colman took over James Broom's lead. If Broom's performance was spectacular yesterday Colman's must have been more so as he posts a 30K-plus lead over the field for the start of day two. Canadian player Matthew Jones was just shy of Broom's total yesterday by some 2,000 chips. These three will attract the most attention tomorrow from chip hungry players and the media.
I mentioned that the room was very calm and quiet today - that's true bar one exception - table one.
Table one is right in front of where we sit so we were witness to an entertaining battle of wills between Sydney resident Sammy Khouiss and anyone who would bite at his goading.
Matthew Jones was in seat one and Khouiss in seat three. After the constant Khouiss trash talk Jones decided to start some of his own. This normally works in Khouiss's favor but today Jones was the chip victor and Khouiss was eventually dispatched by one of his other opponents, flopping a set of 2s and rivering quads. Ahh, tranquility reigns once more.
Another of the big personality players here is Billy "the croc" Argyros. Argyros had made a good start today and was moved to a table with one of the young chip leaders, Elliot Smith. The hand I watched drew quite a crowd.
Pre-flop Billy had re-raised in position behind the youngster. The flop of Ks-Qs-4s was checked to Billy who thought for a while and went all-in for just under 60,000. Now it was Elliot's turn to think and think and think. He talked to Billy, was ignored, tried again and again, eventually getting a response. More thinking, moving of chips, glancing, restacking, cutting down, stacking and finally calling, showing A-K. Billy tossed his cards over, also showing A-K, but his ace was a spade, giving him the freeroll to a 150,000+ pot . But there was no spade, turn nor river.
Two of the three PokerStars sponsored players starting today made it through to bagging up. Celina Lin signed off on 57,000 while Hachem will return tomorrow with 35,000.
As I was leaving the poker room live table action was well underway. Top end tables were a 5-5 blind PLO game and a 5-5 blind NLHE game. The elite game was a 10-20 PLO hosting a mix of the successful young guns of the Aussie poker world and some old stagers, each with mountains of $5 and $25 chips and an odd stack of $100's in front of them. No names of course but a few day two survivors obviously needed just a little action before calling it a day.
