Aussie Millions visit

I didn't end up getting to Crown for the start of the Aussie Millions Main Event as planned. We had a big night out the night before and spent Sunday drinking at the Riverland Cafe. After a game of buzz at my friend's place we had dinner and figured a quiet night in was the way to go.

So Monday I dropped in to check out the action. As I was heading down to the poker room I passed by Lee Nelson and Jeff Lisandro. I then ran in to some friends in the poker room and they gave me the lay of the land and told me stories about the players they had met and the games they had been in. Cat had her shirt by virtually every big name player at the event, I was just happy to see a few of them.

After wandering around in the main room for a little while I headed up to Studio 3 which was where the final table of the high rollers event was taking place as well as some feature tables from the Main Event. On the final table was of course the great Phil Ivey as well as Tony G and a few other name pros. On the outer tables were Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Annette Obrestad and the rather hot Leo Margets. Apparently I didn't notice Shane Warne, Dani Stern and Lucky Chewy on the outer tables.

Downstairs I eventually found Tony "Bond18" Dunst, Jay Rosenkrantz (2M2MM) as well as Jeff Fenech and Amanda De Cesare, winner of The Poker Star.

Here are some of the photos I took (excuse the quality, they are off my iphone and I didn't want to make it too obvious I was taking players pics):

Jay Rosenkrantz in the middle, Jeff Fenech front right corner

Tony "Bond18" Dunst in the jacket of course, surprisingly no tie

Lee Nelson

Jeff Lisandro and his trademark hat

Pro updates

Just a quick post to give you some updates from a few of my stories last week.

Firstly, Alex Fitzgerald (AKA Assassinato) finished 7th in the EPT San Remo. The PokerStars blog had a live feed of the final table but I was at home on a wireless plug-in modem so it wasn't practical to watch much of it. I kept up to date on the blog and the key hand that ended it for Alex was when he re-raised all-in on someone with ace king. The original raiser called turning over pocket jacks and Alex's hand didn't improve. His stack was crippled and he was out shortly after. While disappointed he didn't last longer on the final table, he did walk away with 171,000 euros.

I hoped Alex might give more of a breakdown of the tournament on his blog but I think he's happy to just be home catching up on everyday life. Here is the main post he wrote about the final table achievement and the payday and here's an article that mentions him in the top 10 online players to watch at the World Series of Poker (if he actually goes).

Elsewhere, I had hoped Joe Hachem might get deep at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo but unfortunately he was out in day 3. Annette Obrestad however made it to the final two tables finishing in 13th place and picking up 77,000 euros for her efforts.

Pieter de Korver took out the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo, not Joe or Annette as I had hoped

2009 PokerStars.com EPT Grand Final

I was checking out Poker News today to see what was going on around the place and saw that they have already finished day 2 of the Pokerstars EPT Grand Final.

I have been reading Daniel Negreanu's blog and his twitters so I knew his tournament was over but I'm glad to see that Aussie and one of the faces of PokerStars, Joe Hachem is doing well. Check out the front page of Poker News for a quick interview with Joe. After my last post, I see that Annette Obrestad is smashing up the field in 2nd place.

There are just 149 players left out of the 935 starters. From an Aussie point of view it would be great to see Joe continue on and finish deep.

Annette Obrestad's blind win tourney

I was looking for some good poker blogs yesterday afternoon (yes, it was a quiet afternoon at work) and stumbled across young female poker pro, Annette Obrestad's blog. I remember watching her win the WSOP event in Europe a year or two back. I was in Sydney at the time on business and had some time before I flew out so I was watching it in the club lounge of the hotel. She was only 19 at the time and from my perspective she was very aggressive and seemed to getting extremely lucky with some of her showdown situations (going in well behind but sucking out).

I read a few of her blog posts yesterday and actually like her story. She started from nothing when she was 15 by winning money from an online freeroll and built her way up playing tournaments to become one of the top rated online poker players. Impressive!

One story that I found about her is how she won a 180 player tournament without looking at her hole cards (except for maybe one hand she said). I play a lot of 90 and 180 tournaments and that is quite a feat. Click on the title below to read the full story and see her in action!

Betfair | A look at Annette's blind win tourney

A forum poster recently asked how Annette could have won a 180-player online tournament without looking at her cards.

'With a Post-it Note', came the amusing and only response.

It was probably not the answer the poster was looking for and they were just marvelling in the fact Annette could win a tourney without looking at her hand in her hole cards.

She has since explained that it was an exercise in the importance of playing in position and the videos below shows how she demonstrated this as she folds KK in the first few hands.

Speaking about why she did 180-player tournament blind challenge she said. 'To show just how important it is to play position and to pay attention to the players at the table. Like, if you knew that someone was weak you'd attack them.'