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Both Phil Ivey and Sorel Mizzi have arrived for the tournament and taken their seats. Mizzi is on the feature table while Ivey was seated at the secondary table.
On the flop, Winfred Yu checked, and then called a bet of 2,500 from Daniel Negreanu. Both players proceeded to check the turn, and then Yu check-called a bet of 6,500 on the river, only to muck when Negreanu rolled over for a straight.
It wasn't a monster pot, but it was the first of the day.
It is now 15 minutes past the original start time and players are just now starting to filter in. We've already seen Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, and Tom "durrrr" Dwan walking about.
We've waited a whole extra day, and it looks like we may be waiting a little more for the start, though it is right around the corner.
After being postponed for a day to accomodate some played preoccupied with the Chinese New Year, the 2012 Crown's Aussie Millions Poker Championship $250,000 Challenge is about to get underway. The stage is set in Studio 3 and all the remains to be seen is just exactly will fork over the largest buy-in in tournament poker history.
Last year, this event drew 20 runners and created a prize pool of $5 million! The field included three Chinese businessmen: Paul Phua, Richard Yong and Wang Qiang, who were joined by the likes of Sam Trickett, Erik Seidel, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Phil Ivey, and Daniel Cates, just to names a few.
All of those players are back and expected to play this event, even Ivey, who busted the Aussie Millions Main Event less than an hour ago in 12th place, barely missing out on the final table. In addition, there are some new faces in the land down under who will be in today's field including Jason Mercier and Daniel Negreanu. As the latter wrote on his Twitter:
"That's my buy in for the tourney tomorrow. $250k to flip some coins. Turbo structure won't last long"
Negreanu is referring to the fact that this event is designed to last only one day, meaning it is a turbo; as such, you can expect some high-octane action right from the starting gate. We're not sure exactly how many players will be in contention this afternoon, but we'll know soon enough. One thing is for sure, Seidel, who won this event last year for $2.5 million, will be intent on repeating as champion.
Action is set to get underway at 4:00 P.M. local time so stayed tuned to PokerNews for all the latest and greatest from the 2012 Crown's Aussie Millions Poker Championship $250,000 Challenge!