/ Editor / 15 January 2008 / Leave a comment

Welcome to my ramblings of the Aussie millions! 27 Team Betfair members have rocked up down under being the largest group that we have had ever..

Welcome to my ramblings of the Aussie millions, firstly no one told me how long it takes to get over jet lag- 6 days I have been here and spent two of them feeling very poorly, and only now do I feel vaguely normal although my hours are pretty crazy. However as the poker world is a strange place that is no bad thing and my body clock is ready to spend the hours watching team Betfair perform. In the couple of days that I have had the opportunity to see daylight the temperatures have exceeded the 40 degree mark which for any English fair maiden is far too blimin hot.

27 Team Betfair members have rocked up down under being the largest group that we have had ever. The first job was to get everyone together for a launch party to the event. For this we hired the 89th floor of Eureka towers (https://www.eurekafunctions.com.au/) which was pretty cool and impressed even our most difficult to please guests. It was a great opportunity for the players to meet their nemesis's, their friends and their fish all at the same time.

The following night new found friends decided to have a spot of poker together, however with it being the weekend the lack of tables with a dealer was a problem until we found poker pro. For those of you who don't know what this is its basically a poker table with computers in it so no need for a dealer and at a $1/$2 game it takes 10 % rake or maximum $6 dollars even if there is no flop the casinos latest cash cow! Anyway we managed to secure a private table and play poker, well at least that's what I thought I would be doing but when you have players at your table that are form Sweden or Norway you know that every hand is going to be raised. So I had to change my game and I learnt to valuable lessons.

1) If you put your chips in when you are slightly ahead on a coin flip you loose (my QQ vs. AK)

2) Norwegians go all in on every hand so to get value I thought to myself any ace and I push so my A7 vs. K9 was looking good until the 9 on the river

Anyway after several hours of this craziness and some really bad beats, Seiikyo170 set of Qs was beaten by a straight on the river and another hand that I don't recall won when they only had two outs. It was then all in time so everyone went all in blind which resulted in only two players having cash AceDude with $600 and the other with $70, but at these tables you could only play 3 handed or more. So we decided to go to the bar for refreshments and there sitting in pride of place in the room was a heads up pokerpro table. So it was decided they should play heads up all in blind for the money, and soon enough all the cash went to the player with $70. Tendertrap then sat down with $100 the new rules were that you could only bring $20 to the table to challenge for the cash (so you had 5 chances) but each time you had to go all in blind- if your money ran out then you could bring another $20 etc. So tendertrap soon had the cash. It was at this point that protégé sniffed a gamble in the air and wanted in on the action, and very soon he also found himself with all the cash- numerous challenges followed but no one could get any further than $300 off him. Thankfully someone pointed out that it was now 5am so we all scuttled off to bed as the main event was starting the next day.

The main event was opened by some rather bizarre Australian group but the vibe in the room was good, the tournament staff are predicting a field of around 800 runners which should make for a good event. A video was then shown of the previous year's event, followed by a brief chat with the Great Dane himself Gus Hansen. It was then left to Joe Hachem to open the ceremony which would have been fine if he had not asked everyone to clap for travelling so far...finally he mentioned the words Shuffle up and deal and the room exploded with chip ruffling, cards being shuffled and a bit of chitchat.

216 runners started day 1a, whilst satellites were still running for the main event to start on day1b and 1c.

Representing Team Betfair were the veterans of playing poker with Betfair were Philly, bifta, Heffernan and making his debut was cort. Sadly it was not a great start to the tournament with threedom pass winner HEFFERNAN getting involved in two big pots which crippled his stack leaving him in a weak position and sending him to the rails early. Bifta and cort stood bravely but it was not meant to be and by the time play finished only philly 45300 was still in with 90 other players progressing to day2.

Day 1b is the busiest day for team Betfair so will report back tomorrow with news from the tourney.

Estelle B