The 2012 Aussie Millions is in full swing at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia, with the latest champion, Tom “hitthehole” Middleton, crowned in the $1000 (Australian) Six Handed No Limit Hold’em event early this morning (Eastern time).
385 players came out for the two day tournament on Thursday and the players wasted little time getting to action. By the end of the night on Thursday, not only had the money been reached but the players had also worked their way down to the final three tables. Taking home a little something for their twelve hours of work on Thursday were two of Australia’s notable poker names, Tyron Krost and former World Champion Joe Hachem.
Craig Cockburn and his 474,500 in chips led the final 18 players to the felt on Friday with Kosta Mamaliadis, the thirteenth place finisher at the 2011 World Series of Poker, hot on his heels. Another notable name in the poker world, Stefan Jedlicka, was sitting in third, while Middleton lurked back in the pack in seventh place.
In a brisk first hour of play, the contenders were eliminated down to just two tables and everyone expected a fast finish to the event. Greg Tucker, Tanya Puppa, Tudor Kondevski, Nino Marotta, Brian Roberts and Tomi Aalto all were vanquished in that sixty minutes, with Cockburn maintaining his chip lead and Middleton moving up the leaderboard. After this flurry of action, however, the final twelve players slowed the pace quite a bit.
Over the course of the next three hours, the final table would be determined. The unfortunate final table “bubble boy” was Xin Zhao, who found pocket threes in his hand and pushed his final chips to the center. He was looked up by Joel Dodds, who tabled an off suit A-J, and the duo was off to the races. After nothing threatening to Zhao appeared on the flop, the Jack on the turn hit Dodds to give him the lead. Zhao was left looking for one of his two remaining outs on the river but, once it blanked, he was out in seventh place.
At the final table, Middleton suddenly came alive. He was responsible for the elimination of every player once the six handed table was determined, taking slightly less than two hours to take down the championship. After defeating Dodds in heads up play (which took only ten minutes), Middleton could claim this championship and the $84,200 first place prize.
1. Tom Middleton, $84,200
2. Joel Dodds, $58,135
3. Peter Skouteris, $40,450
4. Craig Cockburn, $30,800
5. Kosta Mamaliadis, $23,100
6. Ben Lingenfelder, $15,400
Friday’s action also saw the first day of play for the $1000 No Limit Hold’em Rebuy tournament, which has proven to be popular with the deeper pocketed pros. 92 players came together to donate 331 rebuys, creating a sizeable $423,000 prize pool. The final table in this event will play tomorrow and feature several top pros in the game today.
Marvin Rettenmaier leads the tournament with 113,700 in chips, but Canada’s Mike “SirWatts” Watson is close behind with 102,600 in chips and Jonathan Karamalikis is right behind with 101K in chips. Jim Collopy, Michael Benvenuti, Krost and Dan “djk123” Kelly are also alive in the tournament, but they will have their work cut out for them as none of those players has over 46K in chips.
This final table will play out on Saturday, along with the start of the two day $1500 Bounty Tournament. All of this action leads up to the start of the Main Event on Sunday, which should draw a strong contingent of pros from around the world. Also left on the Aussie Millions schedule are the two “Challenge” events, featuring buy ins of $100,000 and $250,000, respectively.
For much of the remainder of the month, it is easy to see that the eyes of the poker world will be focused on Melbourne as the Aussie Millions rolls along.
