Twenty players ponied up $250k each to enter the most expensive tournament in history. The recent PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and Aussie Millions Super High Roller $100k buy-in events only had 38 players each, so this is something special to create, at the last minute, such a massive AUD$5 million prize pool tournament from only 20 players. There were extra players that would have played (e.g. Patrik Antonius who was one of the leaders in the AM main event going on at the same time) if it had been better scheduled.
1. Erik Seidel - AUD$2.5 million
2. Sam Trickett - AUD$1.4 million
3. David Benyamine - AUD$1.1 million
4. Wang Qiang
5. Richard Yong
6. Chris Ferguson
7. Andrew Feldman
8. Phil Ivey
9. Nikolay Evdakov
10. Daniel Cates
11. Paul Phua
12. Tony Bloom
13. Annette Obrestad
14. Eugene Katchalov
15. John Juanda
16. Alexander Kostritsyn
17. Roland de Wolfe
18. Tom Dwan
19. James Bord
20. James Obst
“I’m really, really excited to win this. This was very special because it’s such an elite field,” said Seidel. “The entry fee was so big, I didn’t want to lose $250,000. I’m just having such an amazing month, year so far. It’s just incredible.”
Amazingly Erik Seidel came back from a 5-1 chip deficit heads up to win the massive top prize. He got third in the PCA $100k Super High Roller event and is off to an amazing 2011.
“It didn’t look good and it didn’t feel good,” Seidel said about the 5-1 chip defecit he faced against Trickett once David Benyamine was eliminated in third. “I thought well, I’m obviously not laying down. I’ll sit and play and hope things go well and then they did.”
He defeated young British player Sam Trickett heads up. Tricket has also had an amazing 2011 already having won AUD$1.5 million last week in the $100k AM High Roller event only to come back this week and win another AUD$1.4 million. He played great once he grabbed the lead and he also seems to have a knack for these high profile and high pressure events.
I wanted to mention one hand where the fickle nature of poker comes in. Mid way through the event, Trickett was sitting on a below average stack of around 330k stack when this hand came up...
The action started with Tony Bloom, raising it up to 29,000. Wang Qiang made the call, and action folded to Sam Trickett in the small blind. He thought for his full 30 second allotment, and then tossed his time bank chip into the pot for an additional thirty seconds. After using up only a few seconds of his extra 30 seconds, he announced he was all in.
Paul Phua, in the big blind took back his big blind, which was yet to be changed out for the 12k big blind from the brown 25k chip he had thrown in. There was a bit of confusion for a moment, as it looked like he just wanted to take back his blind, until he decided to slide in his entire stack of brown 25k chips into the middle. This prompted Tony Bloom to bust a move and push his chips front and center as well.
When they turned over their hands, Tricket saw he was in a world of trouble.
Sam Trickett: 6-Hearts, 6-Diamonds
Paul Phua: A-Clubs, K-Clubs
Tony Bloom: A-Spades, A-Diamonds
Trickett held 20% equity in a hand worth 1.1 million and the clear chip lead. He hit his two outer 6 on the flop, won the hand and more than tripled up. From there he dominated, applying pressure and building his stack all the way until heads up where all the cards seem to fall Erik Seidel's way.Paul Phua: A-Clubs, K-Clubs
Tony Bloom: A-Spades, A-Diamonds
Congratulations to Erik Seidel, who with the win moves to $13.1 million in lifetime live tournament winnings, good for third place behind Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey.
