Australian Poker Tour Sydney – It’s a wrap!

Winter has come!

The choice between leaving the cold of Melbourne to a warmer place isn’t normally a difficult one for me. The ‘call to action’ however, for a Sydney based tour, aaarrgghhh ok … yes I hold onto the Sydney versus Melbourne rivalry like the next warm blooded Melbournite.

So off to Bankstown Sports Club for me! As MC for the event there wasn’t a lot of time for the other hat, “The Poker P.I.”, to do any live or even delayed reporting for that matter – long days and record entries to a main event will do that to you!

The Australian Poker Tour has come a long way since the early days of Acacia Ridge in Brisbane back in September 2017 – not even 12 months ago – and Sydney is only stop number three on the calender!

Effectively everything has been revamped from A toZ, with any event there can always be some things done differently (versus better) but credit where credit is due – the professionalism and transparency has increased ten fold.

Feel free to skip the ramble and scroll to “results” – for those who are still with me, I will continue.

Let me start the following by letting you know that I am an independent contractor – employed to consult, talk and blog – I have no other financial interest other than “for the love of poker”.

Big events such as this don’t just happen – people aren’t born with the inherent ability to pull this kind of logistic nightmare off, it takes planning, assistance, strength in all senses and a damn positive attitude!

We had approximately 15 (from memory) individuals with various backgrounds, strengths, knowledge and know how – people that had never met each other – all turning up day one to put on a big poker event in Sydney with no-one knowing just how successful (or not!) – this was actually going to be!

That’s right, 15 almost strangers with one goal, to run a professional tournament with as few issues as possible, learn, evolve, be the change, integrate the change and get ready for the next one!

Not an easy feat! It starts with intro’s, hugs and handshakes all round – a champion team will beat a team of champions any day!

All in all – it was a great result. New friends from “once were strangers”, a new part of the map which proved to be bigger than any other main event prize pool! Let the nay-sayers beware! The Australian Poker Tour is here and will only get bigger and better!

Coming to a major city near you – soon!

Next stop – Eaton Hills in Brisbane from September 7th-9th, 2018.

THE RESULTS

Main event champion – Ling Liu $17,750 (deal with second place runner)

Besting a field of 696 runners (record!) Ling is our first female main event champion!

High roller event champion – Dale West $9,000 (reduced by $1,000 – deal between final 5 players)

A little over 100 runners for this $330 buyin (re entry allowed) and with a good structure and soft field (tongue in cheek – I busted 21st) Westy would maneuver his way through the shark tank to heads up play.

Westy hasn’t won a heads up battle since he was a teenager, well it seems that way, and his whole rail was there to witness whether he would do the Greg Norman “choke” or if he could bring home all the bickies!

Clearly he has been eating all the biscuits for around a week now – congrats Westy – well deserved!

Battle of the leagues

Champion team – Poker Nation

Event champion – Peter Stapleton

The Australian Poker Tour is not a league and does not have its own venues. They pride themselves in their independence, apart from affiliate leagues agreeing to run satellites for direct entry, there is no competition from The Australian Poker Tour.

So what do you do when you have many people from many leagues, home games, bowls clubs (that happens in Sydney) and “thrown together loners and losers” – that name is quoted from Jess in Tasmania – she probably doesn’t read this blog anyway, because, Tasmanian – I lost her at Winter is here! … IT’S ALWAYS WINTER IN TASMANIA!

Now before the Tasmanians send hate mail – I confess I am ex-tassie boy from St Helens, Devonport and Hobart – just jokes peeps!

But I digress!

Enter a team of between 5-10 people and pay a team entry for $50 – making one prize pool. Each team member buys into the tournament in addition to the other prize pool.

Top 50 players are awarded points for their team – highest aggregate of points scoops the “pot” for the team entries and standard “top 10%” win their part of the player prize pool.

Poker Nation – led by Leigh “Frothy” Northrop and his team of bandits would easily secure the team prize and trophy.

But it would be Pokershop’s own Peter Stapleton who would win the event for the bigger $$$’s and some glory of his own.

This is the second time this event has been run, both winners of the actual event have not been on the winning team. Both winning teams have come 2nd and 3rd and won the team prize – interesting, maybe – maybe not.

PLO champion – Dylan Clark