Home / Poker News January 2013 / 2013 Aussie Millions – Rupert Elder Wins Opening Event
2013 Aussie Millions – Rupert Elder Wins Opening Event
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2013-01-22 11:19
The Aussie Millions’ opening event was the AU$1.1k
NL Holdem tournament which featured a structure that allowed re-buys, so the eventual number of buy-ins reached the impressive 1,338 mark. There were only 708 actual players though, but the size of the prize-pool is determined by the number of buy-ins so for all practical reasons, we can state that 1,338 players played.
The resulting prize-pool was an AU$1.33 million one, which guaranteed the winner an AU$250k share.
There were quite a few name competitors in the starting field, thus the final table turned out to be an extremely competitive one as well. Besides Elder, the eventual winner, Martin Finger and Brendon Rubie had also made the home dash of the tournament.
Ashley Warner was the first name player to bite the dust at the final table: he was bounced in 9th place, picking up AU$25k for his efforts. Ted Nguyen fared better but not much better. He was eliminated in 6th place, picking up AU$66k. Brendon Rubie was the one who followed Nguyen out the door in 5th place. Rubie’s last hand saw him go up against the eventual winner, with a Qc,Jc in his pocket. Elder had pocket 6s for the classic coin-flip. Not only did Elder’s pocket pair hold, it actually managed to improve when a 3rd 6 landed on the turn.
Fabian Craib’s elimination in 3rd place set up the heads-up stage of the event. Craib was the first player to finish in 6 figures.
When the heads-up stage of the action began, Elder appeared quite untouchable, with more than 10 million chips against Finger’s 2.95 million.
The final hand of the tournament saw Finger push his last chips into the middle on a flop of Q,J,2 rainbow, holding a Q,7. Elder’s K,10o made a straight though for the win and the title.
