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