2008 Aussie Millions Recap

The Aussie Millions stop on the tour is a favorite of the regular tournament pros for many reasons. The staff at the Crown Casino is top notch, they offer a number of unique preliminary tournaments (including a mixed-stud event taken down by last year’s Main Event runner-up Jimme Fricke), and The Crown organizes numerous activities for the players to get to experience Melbourne during their time down under. Paul Wasicka blogged about his scuba diving adventures, Joe Sebok and Greg Mueller took turns futilely attempting to hit balls off a professional cricket bowler (the cricket version of a Pitcher), and PokerRoad’s own Amanda Leatherman, along with the PokerNews video crew, documented the drunken shenanigans aboard the riverboat cruise hosted by Full Tilt.

Oh yea, there were also a few poker tournaments going on – including a $100,000 AUD buy-in, a $5000 AUD heads-up tournament, and of course the $10,000 AUD Main Event.

The $100,000 event, which drew a field of 18 of the world’s top players last year, saw an increase to 25 entrants in 2008, making for a prize pool of $2.5 Million AUD and a first prize of $1.25 Million. The usual suspects turned up for the event including Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, and Erick Lindgren, as well as online whiz-kids Tom ‘durrr’ Dwan and ‘Action Jeff’ Garza. Despite facing arguably the toughest field of the year, tournament veteran Howard Lederer bested a final tablet that included Jeff Lisandro, Mark Teltscher, Niki ‘KaiBuxxe’ Jedlicka, and Erick Lindgren (last year’s $100k champion).
As hard as it is to believe, this $100,000 buy-in tournament was merely the opening act to the actual Main Event, which many players proclaimed was one their favorite events of the year. Due to the growing popularity of the Aussie Millions, and poker in Australia in general (Joe Hachem talks about how Australia is experiencing now what the U.S. experienced just after the Moneymaker craze), the field had to be broken up into three starting days.

With around 250 runners on each of the three starting days, the Main Event had a total of 780 players (747 entries in 2007) making for a total prize pool of $7.8 Million, with first place taking home $1,650,000.

A number of big names got off to greats starts on their respective day 1s. 2007 Aussie Millions final tabler Andy Black ended day 1a with over 167,000 in chips and the chip lead, while a player named Phil Ivey ended as the day 1b chip leader with around 163,000 having twice eliminated players with quads. Day 1c saw far fewer big names accumulate large stacks and relatively unknown Soren Ericksen ended as day 1c chip leader with 130,000.

Crown employees and TV crews must have been ecstatic when the random table draws for the combined field for day 2 saw overall chip leaders Andy Black and Phil Ivey at the same starting table along with Australian poker legend Joe Hachem and Thomas Bihl (WSOPE bracelet winner). The tough table draw (or perhaps a pending tee time) may have lead to the plunge of Ivey from 2nd in chips to out of the tournament towards the start of play on day 2; Joe Hachem, another member of the table of death, also bit the dust in the early stages of day 2.

By the end of play of day 2, 98 players remained, and many big names were trying to track down Australian Open tennis tickets for the following day, seeing as their services were no longer needed in the poker room, but a few well-knowns managed to climb to the top of the chip counts. Kevin Saul and Erick Seidel made out well on day 2, and Andy Black managed to avoid the perils of his opening table draw and joined Saul and Seidel in the top ten chip counts at day’s end.

Day 3 saw the field play down to 22 players, and many of the 76 casualties were the well-known accomplished players that rated to be favorites coming into the day. Out of the 22 remaining players, only Erick Seidel and Max Pescatori had really made names for themselves in the tournament poker scene to date. A gentleman by the name of Antonio Casale held the chip lead at the close of day 3. Casale is rumored to have played at the Crown Casino literally every single day since it opened in 1997.

In almost every tournament, there is a day where one player seems to go on a streak where he can do no wrong. Every time he has a hand, he gets paid off; he wins every pre-flop all-in race; he bluffs when his opponents have nothing and value bets when his opponents have just enough of a hand to pay him off. On day 4, Michael Chrisanthopoulos had such a day. Chrisanthopoulos, who had virtually no live tournament results to date, started the day with around 800,000 in chips, which was just above average. He ended the day with over 6.5 Million in chips – almost 45% of the chips in play and almost 5 Million more than second-place Antonio Casale.

Erick Seidel and Alexander Kostritsyn began the first 15 hands by chipping away at Chrisanthopoulos’ monster chip lead, both moving to over 2.7 Million. Kostritsyn continued to close the gap on Chrisanthopoulos, while Seidel doubled-up Peter Ling, one of the short stacks, taking Seidel down to just under 1.5 Million in chips. Kostritsyn then all but closed the gap by taking out local favorite Antonio Casale when Kostritsyn moved in on Casale who called with J-J. Kostritsyn’s A-A held up and he dragged the pot worth approximately 5,000,000 in chips.

Nino Marotta was Kostritsyn’s next victim when his Q-10 failed to improve against the A-J of Kostritsyn. Marotta earned $400,000 AUD for his 5th place finish. By this time Kostritsyn had moved almost dead even to Chrisanthopoulos, both with slightly over 6,000,000 in chips. Erick Seidel then went to work chopping away at a few small and medium sized pots to keep his short stack manageable. For the next 15 hands or so, the big stacks jockeyed for position as the two short stacks (Ling and Seidel) did their best to stay alive. Chrisanthopoulos then finally finished off Ling on an A-K-10 board and Ling was all but dead when the hands were tabled (A-K for Chrisanthopoulos, A-5 for Ling) – the miracle running 5s or Q-J for a chop didn’t come through and Ling went home in 4th place with $500,000 AUD.

A few hands later, Seidel doubled through Chrisanthopoulos when they got it in preflop. Chrisanthopoulos’ A-J flopped a pair, but Seidel’s 2-2 turned into a winner when a deuce fell on the river to take Seidel up to just under 3,000,000 in chips. After a few losing battles with Kostritsyn, Chrisanthopoulos fell into 3rd place in chips, but then doubled through Seidel to get back into 2nd. His seat there was, however, short-lived, as Seidel almost immediately doubled back through Chrisanthopoulos. This left the chip counts at:

Alexander Kostritsyn - 8,750,000
Erik Seidel - 4,700,000
Michael Chrisanthopoulos - 2,020,000

The next 15 hands or so saw Chrisanthopoulos bleed off enough chips to have to move-in with Ac6c and Alexander Kostritsyn called with two tens. The tens held up and Michael Chrisanthopoulos was eliminated in 3rd Place taking home $700,000 AUD.

Heads-up began with Kostritsyn holding and 11.1 Million to 4.5 Million chip lead over Seidel. The first 12 hands were mostly small post seeing Kostritsyn slightly increase his chip lead. Seidel doubled up a few hands later making the count around 10 Million to 5 Million. Seidel began to demonstrate the ferociousness that other pros talk about when they talk about Erick Seidel, using small pot after small pot to eventually take the chip lead 8.7 to 6.8 Million. Just as quickly, on a K-K-J board, Kostritsyn pulled of a gutsy semi-bluff taking down a large pot and regaining the chip lead – Kostritsyn tabled A-10 after Seidel folded.

Kostritsyn ran his chip lead up to around 10 to 5 Million before perhaps the most definitive (and perhaps strangest) hand of the head-up match took place. On a A-8-4-K-7 board, and with around 2.5 Million already in the pot, Kostritsyn leads out on the river for 1,750,000. Seidel tanks for a while before finally making the call and Kostritsyn shows 8-9. Kostritsyn’s pair of 8s is surprisingly good and Kostritsyn rakes a huge pot on either a brilliant value bet, or accidently bluffing with the best hand and getting called. With a 12 Million to 3 Million chip lead, Kostritsyn now looked poised to take the match.

Two hands later on a J-8-7 flop, they get it all in – Seidel shows A-Q, and Kostritsyn shows J-9. Seidel bricks out and finishes in 2nd place and will head back to the U.S. with a cool million for his efforts. After a three hour back and forth heads-up match, Alexander Kostritsyn is the 2008 Aussie Millions champ.