CELEBRITY – noun, a famous or well known person.

CELEBRITY POKER TOURNAMENT – noun, a chance to see who out of selected NZ celebrities has an ounce of game at the Poker table.

The SKYCITY Celebrity Invitational gets underway on Tuesday night at 6.15. A stellar field of around 150 entrants from all walks of life will take to the tables for the most part to enjoy the occasion but don’t be fooled by the smiling and handshaking, there is more at stake here than purely bragging rights. That’s the great thing about our game, almost everyone fancies themselves as a contender and you can be sure the tension levels will be high come the business end of this event.

Here is the just a sample of the ‘talent’ this tournament has attracted and what could be better than to watch your favourite celebs making calls they should never make and taking down pots the experts tell them they have no rights to be in. Just imagine the fun with some of these potential head to head battles.

Ian Smith & Mark Richardson, Mark Sainsbury & Paul Holmes, Hamish McKay & Neil Waka, Richard Loe & Allan Whetton, Siobhan Marshall & Fleur Saville, Vicky Lee & Aja Rock, Savage & Mareko, Kathryn Powely & Kylie Bailey

So as the SKYCITY Festival of Poker rolls on, get a crew together come up to Level 3, grab a drink then sit back and watch the best live drama there is – POKER !

It doesn’t get any better than Queenstown for a poker tournament and perhaps that explains the 4 ‘no-shows’ from Day 1A of the ANZPT Queenstown at Sky City Casino. Of the 23 that turned up, 18 will progress through to Day 2 here at the inaugural ANZPT Queenstown poker tournament in the most beautiful city in the world.

With 58,075, Measy was chip leader ahead of Paul Chisnall (44,950), Tony Hachem (39,000), Jerry Calder (35,425) and Kristian Lunardi (33,300).

Play resumes today at 12.30pm, with the second of the four day one flights.

As the week winds on, more and more players will start flying in from all over the world and you can be sure both Queenstown and Wharf Casinos (yes this little burg has TWO casinos!) will be humming all week.

ANZPT Queenstown

From the 20-25th of July, Quenstown’s Sky City will be hosting the first ever ANZPT Queenstown tournament with over 70 international poker players competing for a prize pool of over $450,000!

Players from Canada, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, Australia and the United States of America will all be flying in to the adventure tourism capital of the world for what is going to be one of the best PokerStars events ever!

Several players from the PokerNZ community were playing for satellites into the event and our very own ‘downtrou’ managed to win a seat! I caught up with him earlier this week and asked him about the event….

downtrou

PNZ: This was a hotly contended prize package, so just how hard was it to win this seat?

downtrou: Well, um… It is probably easiest to tell you how it came about. I entered at hyper turbo satellite, short-handed (300 chips only and 3 min blinds) for US$44 on PS. There were some 30 entrants with about 5 x $215 tickets to the ME satellite, this game was on about 30mins before the ME satellite started. I scored in this game and then sat in for what i hoped would be a long session.

The ME satellite had around 29 entrants which meant there was only one package on the line. Long story short.. I played tight, was average to below average in chips throughout. Approx 3.5 hours in I hit the final table, last in chip stack count and within one hour had taken out the game! Stoked, especially since it was the first satellite PS had put on for this event, nice to have it locked away early which meant some serious planning could begin – bring on the boarding!

PNZ:
We’ve been hearing that there are some amazing add-ons that were added to your prize package, what were they?

downtrou: Yea, this has been sick, the guys at PS have out done themselves. There were Tourism add-ons available which included fly-in, cruise, fly-out day trip to the Milford sounds, lunch etc OR fly in Heli ride then white water rafting, lunch etc and also an evening meal & gondola ride. The other option was a Snowfileds package…

It was a tough, tough decision, but over the past couple of months they added more to these options and eventually (as a keen boarder) I chose the snowfields option. This includes; 4 day passes for Coronet Peak and/or the Remarkables, transfers to/from the Mountains (lessons if needed) AND a limited edition PS ANZPT QT branded snowboard, bindings and bag , lunch is included too. There is also a gourmet BBQ they are putting on up at Coronet Peak on the Thursday night, 4 courses.. I just hope one of teh courses is a liquid one, good times, can’t wait

PNZ: Now you also won a seat to the Adelaide event earlier this year, what do you think you learned from that tournament that might apply to this one?

downtrou: You can’t beat bad nor dumb luck! As usual, I am going to play my game, the cards and the situations that I face and hopefully lady luck will be kind!

We all wish downtrou the BEST of luck and if you want to get in on the action, you can buy a piece of his stake through this link at ChipMeUp.

If you haven’t got an account, use this link to get an account at PokerStars, one of the most preferred poker sites for Kiwi players online. This link will give you $50 when you deposit $50.

ANZPT Queenstown

Sky City Queenstown is the next stop on the PokerStars ANZPT tour and it’s shaping up to be an amazing tournament.

With Queenstown experiencing amazing snow dump and some great NZ players winning satellites into the tournament, we’re predicting a huge week at Sky City Queenstown from July 19-25.

The main event of the ANZPT is $2500 to enter and will be capped at 200 players.

Satellite seats are still possible, more detail at the Sky City Queenstown site:

http://www.skycityqueenstown.co.nz/Casino/Poker/Satellite-Poker-Tournament.html

The three day event attracted 218 entrants (not bad given day one started on Monday night – perhaps this will be addressed in Season 2 and can only be put down to Crown Casino “squeezing” it into their already packed Melbourne Champs schedule) who all paid the AUD$2,700 entry to create a AUD$545,000 prizepool.

After some late nights and long days of play a final table resulted and looked like this:

ANZPT - Melbourne Champion Levick

Seat 1: Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick (283,000)

Seat 2: Rodney Burles (168,000)
Seat 3: Sam Khouiss (354,000)
Seat 4: Chris Levick (969,000)
Seat 5: Jie Gao (517,000)
Seat 6: Ben Savage (682,000)
Seat 7: Gregory Shillig (190,000)
Seat 8: Peter Aristidou (432,000)
Seat 9: Kristian Lunardi (713,000)

Some 9 grueling hours later, it was PokerStars.net qualifier Chris Levick that won out over regular and pokernews’ own blogger, Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick. Levick took home AUD$158,050 for 1st place and the inugural ANZPT – Melbourne Championship Trophey.

Next on the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour is ANZPT Queenstown. It is a 5 day, NZD$2,500 buy-in event held at Skycity Queenstown from July 21-25. Qualify at PokerStars now and receive $50 free with your first deposit by clicking the banner below:

With a record field, for an event up to $3,000 buy in the 493 entrants meant AU$986,000 was up for grabs. 

Sydney Champ - Paren Arzoomanian

Four intense days and 28 one-hour levels later, the first ANZPT Sydney Main Event title came down to a showdown between a 49-year-old mother-of-six and Gold Coast mortgage broker Lisa Walsh, and 25-year-old Sydney student Paren “Puzz” Arzoomanian. After a great heads up battle, the final hand came when Lisa shoved her stack into the middle and was all in with Kh-9c which Paren called with his Ac-5d. On flopping 2 pair it was over and the 25yo NSW student took home the title of ANZPT Sydney champion and a massive AU$246,500 for his efforts.

Here is a list of the FT payouts:

ANZPT Sydney has been a huge success and drew a field of 493 with a prize pool of AUD$986,000. The next event is ANZPT Melbourne which takes place May 25 – May 27.

Congratulations to those Kiwi’s that cashed and here’s to the Melbourne Champs and the next leg of the ANZPT.