Last night we reached the money at the 2010 ANZPT Queenstown Main Event. Today the players will decide amongst themselves who will get the lion's share of the prize pool -- the $73,630 first-place prize.
The 3rd-place and 4th-place players on the ANZPT Season 2 points leaderboard, Andrew Scarf and John Maklouf, have each secured themselves 26 points and the assurance that they'll leap-frog 2nd-place player Rennie Carnevale. If either Scraf or Maklouf finishes in 1st or 2nd place, they would also overtake leader Tony Hachem. Maklouf, by the way, is gunning for an unprecedented third straight ANZPT final table.
The remainder of the 15 players that have come through the field of 119 are an interesting mix of young and old, Aussies and Kiwis (with a few interlopers), and professionals and recreationals. As a generalization, the players with the most experience seem to be concentrated in the top half of the chip counts. The field would be wise to be wary of Team PokerStars Pro Bryan Huang and Jason Gray. But it's too easy to count out a skilled player solely due to a lack of results. We won't make that mistake, especially since the two biggest stacks in the field belong to Vesko Zmukic and Andrew Watson, players with limited previous results.
As it has every day since Tuesday, play will get started today at 12:15pm local time. Tonight, however, there's no stopping until someone has all the chips.
