Things got underway at around half past twelve today as the first group of players took to the tables in the SKYCITY Festival of Poker Main Event. Certainly no shortage of caps, hoodies, headphones and sunnies as the field got down to business.

Massage was the preference for many to ease away early tournament nerves.

Auckland DJ Sam Hill has his first hand pocket K’s busted by a set on the river, sits back and ponders the poker gods.

Tony Hachem and Eric Assadourian (looking to keep his nose clean until tomorrows sitting)

Brooke Howard Smith host of NZ’s Celebrity Joker Poker always a tiger at the table

The Dealers let their fingers do the work as the cards began to fly and the chip stacks began to change shape

Other local faves Dan Singh and Mike King were also in action in the early session, keep an eye out for more pictures.

downtrou wins a Queenstown ANZPT qualifier

With the ANZPT kicking off in Sydney soon and further out, Queenstown, we know there are a lot of Kiwi’s trying their luck to win a place at both events.
Ultimate dream packages are being offered by PokerStars for the Queenstown Event including 7 nights accommodation, $750US spending money and some amazing tourist packages thrown in (click here http://www.anzpt.com/news/), so the competition has been fierce.

But luck was on point for PokerNZ’s own downtrou (check his profile on this site) in the first Queenstown Sattelite, held Monday night 10pm. With only 26 entrants there was just the one package up for grabs and after a determined 3h43m downtrou is on his way to Queenstown – best of luck and bring it home mate!

“Yeah, pretty stoked, yet another excuse for a holiday and what better place in the world to have an event – only problem is I’m gonna be torn between Poker and Snowboarding not to mention the partying, gonna be so cool seeing everyone and coming home!

As usual there were a heap of Aussies in the Sattellite so always good to win out over em but when it came to heads up it was “konspirator” from Los Angeles, with an even chip stack I knew I was in for a battle. The breaking hand was about 10mins in to the HU session where my A9 spades came good with the nut flush on the river and with 23K chips left I bet half into the pot to which he folded, this left him on 21K and me on 57K, from here it was a real cat n mouse race. As we all know, anyone can win in this position so I was extra cautious, some 30mins later I had him thinking he knew my game and then when I underplayed my pocket Queen’s he went all in, he had Js9s and when an entirely red board came, AJ3A10″ it was in the bag, gg!!

Hope to see SampleOG, Matt Wall and few other local crew in Queenstown as well as some of the Aussies I’ve been rubbing shoulders with in recent months at these events!”

PokerNZ will be attending the Queenstown ANZPT in full force again with a team of supporters and hopefully a few more familiar faces on the felt.
Check out www.anzpt.com for more information about the upcoming tournaments.

With only three weeks to go, we’re getting geared up for the North Island Poker Champs at Auckland’s Sky City Casino. With a guaranteed minimum prize pool of over $50,000 you’ll want to make sure your entry is in soon.

The fee is $1100 and the event kicks off at 12:15pm on Saturday Mar 21st. You can be sure with this kind of action, there will be a lot of familiar faces all vying for that top purse, so even if you can’t afford the buy-in, it will be one of those games that will be great to watch.

More details about the North Island Poker Champs can be found on Sky City’s website:

http://www.skycityauckland.co.nz/Casino/Poker-Zone/North-Island-Poker-Championship.html

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.

The ANZPT Queenstown event will take place July 21-25 at Sky City casino. The Queenstown casino is quite a small one but is set in the most beautiful city in the world.

Buy-in is $2500NZ but you can win your seat through the satellite qualifiers at PokerStars.

If you haven’t already got an account at PokerStars, get $50 on your first deposit here.

ANZPT

PokerStars.Net have announced the next two stops for the ANZPT. Sydney’s Star City will host the next leg of the ANZPT, a 4 day event as part of it’s larger 11 day poker championship starting on April 23.

Then later in July (date yet to be announced) Sky City Queenstown will host it’s first major 5 day poker tournament in the picturesque setting of the South Island. Kiwi’s have long known the secret beauty of this amazing place and now all our poker heroes will get to experience it too.

Pokerstars satellite qualifiers will win not only their entry and travel allowance, but also the added bonus of an adventure tour bungee jumping, jet boating or skiing! Great to see PokerStars really coming to the party on this one.