Six days of competition have taken the Aussie Millions Main Event from its original field of 725 players all the way to the final table and the seven men who will contend for the title. On Sunday at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Shurane Vijayaram will come back with a massive lead over a field that has Jeff Rossiter and Fedor Holz in the mix.
36 players came back to action at the start of Day 4 on Friday with Mustapha Kanit holding the lead with his 2.318 million chips and Day 2 chip leader Jennifer Tilly still quite viable on her 704,000-chip stack. Rossiter and Holz were amongst the more “known” players that also included Seth Davies and former World Poker Tour champion Brian Altman, while Vijayaram was jousting with Tilly on his 745,000 mountain of chips. Altman, unfortunately, was the player who came in on the shortest stack of all. He would depart on the very first hand, with his 54K in chips going over to Haorang Zhang when his 8♣ 7♣ was summarily crushed by Zhang’s A♣ K♣ after an unnecessary Ace on the flop and a King on the turn left him drawing dead.
The first player to make a move on the day was Rossiter, who cracked the 1.2 million chip mark when he got Matthew Wakeman to lay his hand down on a J♣ 2♠ 5♣ 9♣ flop and turn. As he was using those chips to dispatch of Ruzman Hussan, Vijayaram was starting his march. Vijayaram knocked off Steven Swalling, his flopped set of Queens holding on against the K-Q of Swalling, and soon Vijayaram joined Rossiter over the million-chip mark after eliminating Frank Pezzaniti in a classic race situation (Vijayaram’s Big Slick “only” hitting quad Aces against Pezzaniti’s pocket Jacks).
Tilly was never able to get anything going on Day 4, her chips slipping through her fingers until she doubled up through Vijayaram and STILL only had 132K in chips. The World Series of Poker bracelet holder would get her final chips in good, but it would be for naught. After calling a limp from Vijayaram off the button and Nino Marotta in the big blind checking his option, the 4-8-5-4 flop and turn saw Tilly jam after it was checked to her and only Marotta called. Tilly was in good shape to double with her J-4 against Marotta’s 6-4 off suit, but the river seven gave Marotta a straight to top the Academy Award nominee and send her home in 29th place.
A similar story could be told for Kanit who, along with Tilly, was around the top of the leaderboard for much of the tournament. He was able to get up over the three million mark when the tournament was redrawn with three tables left (18 players), but it was a gentle slide from that point onward. Gradually his pursuers drew closer and, with new chip leader Vijayaram at his table, Kanit would send a 1.6 million chunk of his stack to him when Kanit could not call a Vijayaram all in on what seemed to be an innocent 8-2-J-5 flop and turn. That hand saw Kanit’s stack fall under two million, but his next competitive hand decimated him.
After raising from the cutoff, Kanit saw Ben Heath three-bet the action off the button. After both blinds stepped aside, Kanit casually made the call and the twosome saw a Q-8-A flop. Heath c-bet his fortunes to the tune of 185K and, after some study, Kanit made the call. Both players checked the Queen on the turn and, after a King hit the river, Kanit tried to check again, but Heath was having none of it. Heath pushed all in for 1.275 million (slightly less than what Kanit held) and, agonizing over the decision, eventually would call. It was the proverbial “crying call” as Heath turned up a J-10 for the rivered straight against Kanit’s Aces up (A-10), sending Kanit to the basement with 315K in chips. After a double through Vijayaram, Kanit’s final chips would end up in the stack of David Olson as Kanit exited in 11th place.
It would take a quick 20 minutes to determine the final table. Koray Aldemir, Nicholas Wright and Peter Aristidou (oddly enough, the player who eliminated Aldemir) would depart rapidly in tenth through eighth places respectively, with Aristidou sending his stack to Vijayaram to give him a monster stack and set up the final table showdown:
1. Shurane Vijayaram, 7.47 million
2. Ben Heath, 3.27 million
3. Jeff Rossiter, 3.105 million
4. Tobias Hausen, 2.955 million
5. David Olson, 2.35 million
6. Luke Roberts, 1.305 million
7. Fedor Holz, 1.165 million
You might have noticed that Holz snuck into the final table as the short stack. Woe is the final table if he can get some chips in his hand, which is a good possibility as he is surrounded by them with the stacks of Heath (on his immediate right) and Vijayaram (on his immediate left).
The final table of the 2017 Aussie Millions will take place on Sunday as the $100,000 Challenge is scheduled to take the stage on Saturday. Continuing his massive heater from 2016, Holz is also a part of that tournament, so it could be a very profitable weekend for the German superstar. It promises to be an action-packed weekend of poker “Down Under” as the 2017 Aussie Millions reaches its conclusion.
