Can Seidel Repeat as the $250K Challenge Champion?
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!