The Pokerstars.net ANZPT tournament launched  in Adelaide yesterday. Just after 12:30 Joe Hachem arrived to kick things off, welcoming players, thanking the casino and then announcing those words we had all come to hear “Lets shuffle up and deal!”.

With blinds going up every hour, it was going to be a long, slow and steady game but already some of the tables had people going all in within the first few hands.

Grant checks his cards

Kiwi player Grant Kearney was off to a good start but then after 2 1/2 hours was forced to go all in with what seemed like a dead cert. After the turn came, Kearney held the nuts - a full house (5′s full of 2′s) but was taken out by a higher full house after a King came on the river and his opponent showed up pocket Kings, putting an end to his day on the felt.  Kearney had won his seat through a PokerStars satellite, so despite being knocked out, was greatful for the experience. 

Matt Wall at the table with Joe Hachem

Fellow La Vida Poker player Matt Wall was another Kiwi who had won his seat through a satellite and was looking good, staying alive for almost four hours. Sadly he too was to be called and taken out, putting an abrupt end to his tournament. Matt was playing at the same table as Joe Hachem and said “it was great just to be able to play along side him”.

So at the end of the day, there were only 37 players left with day 2 kicking off shortly, let’s hope some of our other Kiwis (including Poker NZ’s own ‘downtrou’) can bring home the bacon.

downtrou wins a seat in ANZPT

Following on from an epic week of poker with the Aussie Millions and Auckland online players ‘sampleOG’ and ‘magicNZ’ winning satellite seats to the ANZPT in Adelaide, we didn’t think it could get much better. But on the eve of Australia Day, Melbourne based Kiwi ‘downtrou’ has just secured one of the last PokerStars satellite seats in the ANZPT in Sky City Adelaide in February.

With  final table dominance having been in last position for over 3/4 of the tournament, left little doubt once he hit the final table. As the chip leader with 30% of all chips in play (over 210,000), he was obvious for at least a 6th place berth.

He will be joined by a huge support crew and as someone who witnessed his game from hand 1 to gaining a final table seat with the highest chip stack, I can confidently say he will definitely be one of the dark horses to watch.

Poker NZ will be at the ANZPT blogging all the results as they come to hand.

Congrats to downtrou, sampleOG and magicNZ, you lads go make us proud!