The 2008 Aussie Millions kicked off at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia with an $1,100 NLHE tournament. 537 players played in the event including Kenna James, Sarah “Aussie Sarah” Bliney, Jeffrey Lisandro and Tony Hachem, Joe’s brother. 20 players survived the first day with eleven of these missing out on the final table. In the end, Melbourne native Vincent Wan played heads-up poker for the title against Michael McDonald. After a lengthy battle that lasted more than 60 hands, Wan emerged victorious.
Here are the final results
1) Vincent Wan - $142,302
2) Michael McDonald - $85,920
3) Peter Pratis - $56,385
4) Justin Gendle - $40,275
5) Jovan Skevic - $29,535
6) Yevgeniy Timoshenko - $21,480
7) Alex Luck - $16,110
8) John Georges- $12,888
9) Con Cotsomitis - $10,203
Event #2 was a Pot Limit Hold’em Tournament. At the end of Day Two, Australian fashion designer Chris Chronis held the chip lead. The aggressive Melbourne native not only held onto that lead he also took it all the way to the end. Dominating the final table, Chronis busted out Alex Keating in ninth place on one of the very first hands. Chronis’ pocket rockets dominated the short stack’s pair of hooks.
He then took out the Poker Pixie, Anna Wroblewski, who missed the first couple of orbits in final table action as she was finishing up an online event she was playing. Wroblewski made it to fourth place, picking up $15,120 for her efforts. Finally, Chronis eliminated David Gorr in less than an hour of heads-up play to take the title and the cash.
These are the standings:
1) Chris Chronis – $60,398
2) David Gorr - $35,910
3) Sam Youssef – $20,790
4) Anna Wroblewski - $15,120
5) Harris Pavlou - $11,340
6) Richard Sara - $9,450
7) Jonathan Karamilikis - $$7,560
8) Manny Stavropoulos - $5,670
9) Alex Keating - $3,780
Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke was the runner up at the 2007 Aussie Millions Main Event, losing out to Gus “The Great Dane” Hansen in a heartbreaker of a heads-up match. Once an online specialist, Fricke has become quite dominant in the brick & mortar poker world especially since his heads-up meeting with Hansen last year. This year, Fricke got redemption of sorts by winning the $500 buy-in Mixed Stud Event. This event featured regular Seven Card Stud, Hi-Lo and Razz variants of the game.
Thomas Bihl, who won the 2007 WSOPE HORSE Event and Australia’s own Mel Judah, who has a WSOP bracelet in stud, were also in attendance at the tournament. However, the event belonged to Fricke. Going into the final table he had an almost two to one lead over his nearest competitor, Graeme Putt, who faced Fricke in heads-up play.
Here are the final results:
1) Jimmy Fricke - $16,800
2) Graeme Putt - $9,600
3) Emmanuel Sideridis - $5,760
4) Jared Bottroff - $4,800
5) Rich Holmes - $3,840
6) Jethro Horowitz - $2,880
7) Trung Tran - $2,400
8) Sean McKenzie - $1,920