Reigning ANZ Player of the Year David Lim has recently scooped up some chips. He was up against one opponent on a board when it was checked to him. He bet 2,500 into a substantial pot and the player folded. Despite winning this pot, Lim is only on 14,000 off his starting stack of 20,000.
More familiar faces have been spotted during the first level of play including last year's ANZPT Melbourne champion Edison Nguyen, Australian regulars Aaron Lim, Jonathan Karamalikis, Adrian Attenborough, along with international ladies Yaxi Zhu and Xuan Liu and Macau regular Raiden Kan.
It's interesting to see so many internationals playing ANZPT Perth, but that's the beauty of piggybacking off the Aussie Millions.
The tournament clock is now telling us that 88 players have entered so far on Day 1a of ANZPT Perth.
We have already recognised quite a few notables in the field and now we can add two internationals to the list as Lennart Uphoff and James Rann are at the tables. Usually it would be somewhat surprising to see players such as this in Perth, but not this time considering the Aussie Millions only wrapped up just over a week ago and both of these guys made the final table of the $10,600 Main Event. For those keeping score, Rann finished in 4th place and Uphoff as the runner-up.
No doubt these two will be looking for more Aussie poker success this week.
There is one Team PokerStars Pro currently at the tables for the ANZPT Perth Main Event and he goes by the name Bryan Huang.
Although he hails from Singapore and is a regular in Macau, Huang has had plenty of success on the ANZPT. He hasn't managed a big run in the ANZPT Perth Main Event, but he did, however, final table the Western Classic Main Event in this poker room back in 2008.
Just a short while into Day 1a of the ANZPT Perth Main Event and there have been 85 entrants so far. This is a freezeout event with registration open until the start of Level 3, so we expect to see a few more filter in over the next couple of levels.
There are plenty of recognisable faces amongst the starting field so far, including 2013 ANZ Player of the Year Iori Yogo and his reigning counterpart David Lim. Some of the interstate regulars in tonight's include Dean Blatt, Jesse McKenzie, Stevan Chew, Michael Addamo and recent Aussie Millions Main Event sixth-place finisher Anthony Legg, while local notables such as Tony Tartaglia, Mile Krstanoski and Brian Mcallister are also at the tables.
Before we venture out into the tournament area, we thought it would be a good time to let you know how today will work.
This is the first of two Day 1 flights. Players start with 20,000 in chips and blinds kick off at 50/100.
It's going to be a short night as just six 60-minute levels will be played. However, considering the late start, that still means players will be out the door at a sleepy 1:30am local time.
With those formalities out the way, let's go see who is playing tonight.