Shurane Vijayaram came into the final table with a substantial chip lead and battled Ben Heath who had the second biggest chip stack at the start of the day for the championship of the 2017 Aussie Millions Main Event. Eventually, the advantage in stack had become one of Vijayaram's keys to winning the grand prize.
A week ago, Vijayaram decided to try out the $130 AUD rebuy event at the Crown Casino, and he ended up winning a seat in the prestigious 2017 Aussie Millions $10,000 AUD no-limit hold'em main event. This resident from Melbourne has truly made the most of his seat, battling and defeating a player count of 725 participants to nab the title and enjoy the grand prize of $1,600,000 AUD (or $1,209,760 USD).
This was Vijayaram's first ever recorded live tournament cash, as the neophyte poker enthusiast normally plays low-stakes cash games or in pub-poker tournaments. His lifetime live tournament earnings drastically went from $0 to more than $1.2 million overnight!
His road to success was no fairy tale, and it was far from easy though he went into the seven-handed final table as the runaway chip leader. His opponents in the final table are already seasoned players including Ben Heath, Fedor Holz, and Jeff Rossiter.Fedor Holz had just freshly won over $16 million last year on the live tournament circuit.
Holz was short stacked but endured to fifth place before being defeated by Rossiter. Holz, who had placed third in the $100K super high roller just a day ago for $266,293 USD, has added another $253,294 USD to his earnings with this most recent deep run.
Vijayaram beat Rossiter in fourth place ($332,684 USD), and took a huge lead with three people remaining. After that, he knocked out Tobias Hausen in third place ($468,782 USD) and took about ¾ of the chips in play into a final heads-up battle with Ben Heath.
Vijayaram relished a ROI (return on investment) which would make any poker player envious. Per the Hendon Mob database, this was his first ever live tournament cash. He entered the Aussie Millions Main Event via winning a modest $130 super-satellite to the Main Event, earning over 12,307% ROI. In case he never plays another poker event, Vijayaram can say that he once won one of the most premiere events on the global tournament calendar.
Below shows the final results of the event:
1 Shurane Vijayaram $1,600,000
2 Ben Heath $1,000,000
3 Tobias Hausen $620,000
4 Jeff Rossiter $440,000
5 Fedor Holz $335,000
6 David Olson $270,000
7 Luke Roberts $210,000
Source: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2017/01/shurane-vijayaram-wins-the-2017-aussie-millions-main-event-26962.htm
