With all three Day One flights now completed at the PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour Sydney Grand Final, the players who one way or another came up with the AUD $6,300 (about $5,800 USD) buy-ins to compete in the event, finally have gotten their first real look at the mountain they need to climb to win this thing, and what's at stake if they reach the top.

396 players ended up entering this final APPT event of Season Three, creating a total prize pool worth AUD $2,376,000, or close to $2.2 million in American currency.  A total 48 players will be able to take a piece of that pie, and one will walk with the biggest chunk worth AUD $594,000.

Of course it wasn't all good news for the players, as the end of Day 1c also revealed how many players had already fallen out of contention, and how many more would still have to go home empty handed.  226 players will return for Day 2 in Sydney, meaning 170 have already been relegated to rail status.

Among the surviving 226 players, some names that stand out include Mark Vos, Lee "Final Table" Nelson, Martin Rowe, Grant Levy, Van Marcus, Casey Kastle, Eric Assadourian and David Steicke.

For more information on what's up down under, visit www.appt.com or check out the PokerStars blog, for highlights and chip counts straight from Sydney.


Story by Mark Anderson