Sorry folks, it’s been one of those weeks.

I came back from Adelaide, unfortunately without any Kiwis in the money. Both PokerNZ sponsored players Grant Kearney and ‘downtrou’ were knocked out on their opening days and a few other Kiwis who had ventured over were also out of the money.

I did have some great photos of the last few days but unfortunately my memory card was wiped (NEVER trust it when they say X-Rays won’t damage them!).

Overall though, the ANZPT Adelaide was a huge success with 215 players registering and a total prize pool of $586,950 up for grabs, making it one of the largest ever 1st time stop on a Season 1 Pokerstars.net tour.

The Adelaide casino was a grand place for such an event and I’d like to make a special thanks to David Galpin, who helped sort me out with Media Passes and giving me access to the Poker Zone with my camera. The whole Adelaide Casino staff and PokerStars team were so helpful and friendly, even to a little old blogger like myself. I look forward to visiting again next year.

So what’s next for Poker NZ?

Later this week I’ll post an interview with Toni Quedly, Poker Manager at Auckland’s Sky City. I was fortunate enough to meet with Toni a couple of weeks ago where she told me all about what’s happening up at Sky City, the history of poker there and what we can expect up in the Poker Zone over the next few months.

Also I’ll be introducing some new contributors to Poker NZ, with so much happening around the country, I can’t keep up by myself! If you’d like to be a contributor to Poker NZ, please contact me through the site.

With the NZ Poker Champs coming up in March and the Sydney ANZPT in April, there will be plenty of satellites available so I’ll keep you posted as to how and when to enter these.

Day two kicked off with 111 players in the field, including big name players like Grant Levy, Tony G and Billy ‘The Croc’ Argyros. PokerNZ’s own ‘downtrou’ was also in the field today and got off to a good start.

The Croc and downtrou

It was certainly noticable how tight people were playing today, after 4 hours there was only 10 players eliminated compared to yesterday’s field that had shrunk considerably at the same time. Perhaps flight 1 had set the level, so competitors were playing tight and conservative all day long.

Around 4:30 sadly, Kiwi hero Graeme ‘Kiwi G’ Putt was elimnated leaving only a few Kiwis left in the game.

As the tournament drills down, I’m thinking that tonight’s game could go longer and as the players head to dinner shortly, the prize money has been announced. 1st place will take home over $190,000AUD and the top 18 people will be in the money.

Pokerstars.net ANZPT Adelaide leg of the tour kicks off in less than 24 hours and already the excitement is building.

Several NZ players were on the Air New Zealand  Adelaide flight this morning including Lee ‘Final Table’ Nelson and online satellite winners ‘sampleOG ‘ and ‘magicNZ’. One noticeable absentee from the flight was Sky City’s Poker Ambassador, Brooke Howard-Smith, who is forfeiting an appearance at the ANZPT to get married this weekend.

With the Pokerstars VIP Party tonight and the first day of play tomorrow, you can be sure Adelaide will be buzzing with poker fever!

Stay tuned to PokerNZ.com for full updates throughout the tournament.

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!