If there's any thought that poker's in a slump in Australia, the 2016 Aussie Millions Main Event put it to rest. The Southern Hemisphere's most prestigious tournament attracted 732 players, up 84 players from the year before, and the largest turnout since 2010.
The increased turnout, which also made it the fourth-largest Aussie Millions Main Event in its storied 19-year history, created a juicy prize pool of AU$7.32 million that will be distributed to the top 80 players. Of that, AU$1.6 million has been reserved for the winner.
After five one-hour levels of play on Wednesday, approximately 150 players remained in contention with Australia's own Dylan Honeyman and his stack of 517,200 leading the way.
Among those who will return on Day 3 are Jean-Pascal Savard (455,200), Bobby Zhang (425,900), Daniel Engels (421,300), Jason Brown (401,600), and James Obst (378,500), who all bagged big stacks. Also still alive are Samantha Abernathy (269,500), Mustapha Kanit (269,000), Philipp Gruissem (260,100), Kitty Kuo (233,800), Ari Engel (228,600), Stephen Chidwick (222,900), and Joe Hachem (139,700).
Of course, not everyone was so fortunate. Among those to fall on Day 2 were 2015 European Poker Awards Media Person of the Year Marc Convey, European Poker Tour Malta champ Niall Farrell, Australian Poker Hall of Famer Gary Benson, Team PokerStars Pro members Celina Lin, Yaxi Zhu, Bryan Huang, Randy Lew, and Jason Mercier, as well as former Aussie Millions champs Manny Stavropoulos and Tyron Krost.
Stavropoulos and Krost were both eliminated by the same man, Benjamin Pollak, and Stavropoulos' elimination paved the way for no back-to-back winner.
Stavropoulos fell early on when he ran pocket nines into Pollak's tens, and Krost followed him out the door a short time later. If you recall, Krost won the Tournament of Champions back in 2012 — which invited all former Aussie Millions winners to an invite-only freeroll. As a result, he won free buy-ins to the Aussie Millions Main Event for life. Krost was freerolling, but his hope of cashing in came to an end when he ran jacks into Pollak's pocket kings.
That left Ami Barer as the only former champ still in contention. Barer, who topped a field of 668 two years ago, is in good shape to make another deep run bagging a stack of 260,000. Impressively, Barer finished in 11th place last year in his title-defense run.
Day 3 will kick off at 12:30 p.m. local time on Thursday. The money bubble should burst as players look to make it through seven levels of play. The PokerNews Live Reporting team will be there every step of the way to capture the action, so be sure to join us then.
In the meantime, check out this "Last Word" game featuring Jessica Dawley:
and both Colman and Ashby were knocked out.
