Main Event
On Sunday, the first starting day of three kicked off at Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. 183 players bought in for $10,600 each (8 more than Day 1a of last year's Main Event) and 97 players were still sitting at the tables after seven 90-minutes levels of play.
Ami Barer, the winner of the 2014 Aussie Millions Main Event, bagged up 142,900 in chips and the third largest stack. Barer now has the chance of becoming the first back-to-back champ in Aussie Million history. Long way to go, but there's a small chance!
$100,000 Challenge
Day 1 of the $100,000 Challenge tourney saw a field of 63 entries. As you probably already figured out, many of the participants were big stars in the poker world. We are not sure how many players survived Day 1, but Jason Mo bagged up the largest stack (637,000). Other familiar faces in the top 10 chip counts include Erik Seidel (493,500), Stephen Chidwick (365,500) and Philipp Gruissem (271,000).
According to Poker News, Daniel "jungleman" Cates didn't do so well in Day 1. After losing his initial buy-in, Cates ran pocket kings into the pocket aces of another player during level 4. Before the flop he screamed, "Are you fucking kidding me!?" and threw his cards across the table - in the direction of his opponent.
The board ran out 10 10 3 3 5 to give the other player the win. In frustration, Cates grabbed a handful of his chips and threw them at his opponent, who took it quite well. Tournament staff were called to the scene and eventually it was ruled that Cates had less chips and had been eliminated. Cates stormed to the rail - for the second time of the day.
