Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016

• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Winner
• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Results
• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Leaderboard
• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016

Aussie Millions 2016: Steve O'Dwyer wins the LK Boutique $250k Challenge! Heath 'TassieDevil' Chick @PokerStars February 1, 2016 6:03 AM In Aussie Millions The final day of the 2016 Aussie Millions Poker Championship came to a close on Monday evening with Steve O'Dwyer adding yet another accolade to his blossoming poker career as he was crowned the champion of the LK Boutique. Steve O'Dwyer Wins 2016 Aussie Millions LK Boutique $250,000 Challenge for AU$951,960. David Peters Eliminated in 2nd Place (AU$889,236) Connor Drinan Eliminated in 3rd Place (AU$1,021,909). It came as a huge shock last year when the $250,000 Aussie Millions Challenge failed to materialize, and this year it has been left out of the festival’s schedule entirely. In 2016 Steve O’Dwyer took down the massive event for almost AUS$1million, and the event has been won 3 times by Phil Ivey, but when last year’s AUS$100K buy-in High Roller attracted only 18 players, Melbourne’s.

1. Aussie Millions 2016: Steve O'Dwyer wins the LK Boutique $250k Challenge! Heath 'TassieDevil' Chick February 1, 2016 6:03 AM The final day of the 2016 Aussie Millions Poker Championship came to a close on Monday evening with Steve O'Dwyer adding yet another accolade to his blossoming poker career as he was crowned the champion of the LK Boutique $250,000 Challenge Event.
2. Phil Ivey Wins Second Aussie Millions $250,000 Challenge Title (AU$4,000,000)! Isaac Haxton Eliminated in 2nd Place (AU$2,820,000) Ivey Fills Up To Double Up.

The focus of the poker world shifts down South once again, as the Aussie Millions is returning to the Crown Casino in Melbourne on January 17th. Poker’s biggest names tend to show up for the events in the Australian summer.

Last year Australian poker took a devastating blow with the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016 passing and effectively banning online poker rooms in the continent nation.

But this doesn’t affect the mood of the organizers of the Aussie Millions. In fact, according to tournament director Joel Williams, they expect it to be bigger than ever since they have seen a steady growth in players in the past few years that they believe will not be stifled by the online ban. They’re aiming to top last year’s record, a total 7,059 entrants in the tournament series.

The Aussie Millions will have the same number of events as last year, 26, but some changes have been made. The AU$250K challenge, cancelled last time due to the low number of entries, is not on the menu - but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be short on high rollers. A AU$25K buy-in event starts on January 26th, the 50K starts two days later, on the 28th, while the biggest of them all, the AU$100,000 tournament launches on February 4th.

The series itself kicks off on January 17th at 6 PM with a AU$1 million GTD event with $1,250 buy-ins. Three more Day1’s are going to be played the following three days for that event.

The other much anticipated event besides the high rollers, the Main Event’s starts on the same day as the 50K event, January 28th, for stakes lower by order of magnitude: it’s “only” a AU$10,600 buy-in tournament. You can get in much cheaper though, through satellites, like last year’s champion did: local amateur Shurane Vijayaram paid AU$130 for his satellite ticket and managed to navigate himself all the way to Main Event victory, eventually pocketing AU$1.6 million.

He secured his first place with this impressive hero call on the river, holding nothing but a flimsy low pocket pair.

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Winner

Vijayaram managed to top the field with such well-known poker players in it like Fedor Holz, who came in fifth, Poker Night in America regular and actress Jennifer Tilly, or 2015 EPT Barcelona High Roller winner, Italian pro Mustapha Kanit.

Seeing such recognizable names at an Aussie Millions table draw is not a rarity, for example the 250K challenge two years ago was won by none other than Phil Ivey - and the ten-time WSOP bracelet winner legend was recently spotted on the flight to Australia by Indian poker pro Nipun Java, so there’s a good chance Ivey’s returning this year!

This year’s Aussie Millions will close with a novelty event, starting on February 5th: two-player tag teams can compete in this AU$1,150 tournament, where the other player on the team has to take over the stack after every 30-minute blind level.

Maybe it’s because of the glut of recent Super High Roller events across the globe, or perhaps the thought of losing out to a ‘semi-retired’ German wunderkind – but whatever the reason, the $100K challenge at the Aussie Millions was looking decidedly empty this year.

So empty, in fact, that the organizers had to delay the start and then cut it from a 3-day event down to just 2, the same number as the amount of players who had registered by the original deadline!

The 41 runners of last year has dwindled to a mere 18 this time round, and that’s almost how many played the $250K challenge in 2016 – a strange anomaly which also saw last year’s winner Fabian Quoss sitting out this week, citing the fact he hasn’t been playing much so perhaps $100K might be better spent elsewhere.

It’s not just Quoss who’s missing from the line-up, however. Where’s Jason Mercier? Where are Philip Gruissem and Igor Kurganov? We know Dwan and Ivey have been MIA for a while, but there are some serious names we’d expect to see who just… well…aren’t there.

Fedor Holz put in an appearance and as expected is up there with chip leaders after day 1, as are Sam Trickett and Nick Petrangelo, but where are all the ‘Asian businesmen’? Where, for that matter, is Antonio Esfandiari? Patrik Antonius? Or Jeff Rossiter, Andrew Lichtenberger and Brian Rast?

These are all huge names in the SHR’s, and we’ve now seen 70 entries in 2015 drop to 41 last year and now 18 (with a $1000 rake rebate!) – while other SHR’s have been thriving, with extra days put on by the organizers in Prague and the Bahamas to accommodate the mega-rolled millionaires of the felt. It’s a genuine mystery!

It has also made the play a bit of a mystery and maths problem, with many players ( Kempe and Shak among them) busting out before the end of registration at level 7, with play then reduced to a single table –only to see a couple of new entries and the tables having to be split again!

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Results

It’s also made the prizes look a bit shabbier than usual for such a high-profile event. When Quoss defeated Ben Tollerene heads-up to the title last year he walked off with the equivalent of US$1,012,636 (AUS$1,446,480) and the three paid spots this year combined aren’t massively ahead of that number.

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Leaderboard

Top spot will get AUS$882,000 which is $668,000. A decent chunk of change for anyone but – this is the Aussie Millions and their 2nd highest buy-in event (designed for millionaires) isn’t making anyone a millionaire!

This is the first year in a while, though, that the Aussie Millions hasn’t had the backing of PokerStars, the Amaya-owned giants re-branding leaving the Melbourne annual festival as a stand-alone event. Has this made it less-attractive for the big names? I can’t think why it would specifically but whatever the reason, it’s a strange occurrence.

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016

So, over to you dear reader. Answers below as usual – the riddle of the missing millionaires!