Poker Tournament coverage

Aussie Millions Main Event underway

Written by Ben Blaschke

It has been another eventful week in the Crown poker room in Melbourne, Australia as players from around the world have converged for the 2014 Aussie Millions.

Of course, the star attraction is the AU$10,600 Main Event which kicked off on Sunday with 176 players taking their seat for the first of three Day 1 flights. With its new partnership with the Asia Pacific Poker Tour opening the door for a much greater number of online qualifiers this year, the Aussie Millions Main Event is looking good to easily improve on the 629 players who took part in 2013.

It will be another week before we know who will be crowned this year’s champion – joining the likes of Gus Hansen, Alexander Kostritsyn, Lee Nelson and 2013 winner Mervin Chan from Malaysia in the record books – but in the meantime there have been plenty of side events to keep us all entertained.

In fact, we witnessed a unique slice of history last week when Italy’s Mustapha Kanit became the first player ever to win two Aussie Millions rings in the same year. Last Monday, Kanit outlasted a field of 1,302 players to win the AU$192,000 first prize, then returned two days later to also take out the Six-Max event and add another AU$104,000 to the kitty.

Celina Lin will be looking to win her first Ausse Millions ring today

Celina Lin will be looking to win her first Ausse Millions ring today

Unfortunately it’s been a quiet Aussie Millions for the Asian contingent so far but Celina Lin has an opportunity to turn their fortunes around today when she sits down for the final table of the AU$1,650 Bounty event. Having made her way through a field of 257 players, Lin sits eighth in chips and will have some work to do at this final table if she hopes to collect the AU$85,500 top prize.