Aussie Millions Main Event Won by a Homeboy

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The Aussie Millions is over for another year with the collective pride of Australian poker players intact because for the second year in a row the main event was won by one of their own. Tyron Krost a 23-year-old Australian native, who qualified online playing in satellite tournaments, invested a total of only $700 of his own money on his way to earning the top prize of two million-dollar and the coveted title of 2010 Aussie Millions Main Event Champion.

Held each January at Crown Casino, Melbourne Australia, Event 9, the $10,000 NLHE Main Event is the richest tournament in the southern hemisphere and draws high level poker playing talent from all around the globe. A field of 746 players competed this year the final table featuring poker pro Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi and the unstoppable Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad.

Krost initially was way behind massive chipstack leader Mizzi, but the experienced tournament pro couldn’t seem to get much going and once Krost gained chip lead he held onto the position. After methodically knocking out his final tablemates he went head-to-head Frederik Jensen, but Krost had a 2 to 1 chip advantage and made short work of it to claim the title and his first major tournament win.

Top seven places in the Aussie Millions Main Event were:

1st: Tyron Krost with $2,000,000

2nd: Frederik Jensen with $1,100,000

3rd: Sorel Mizzi with $715,000

4th: Kosta Varoxis with $450,000

5th: Peter Jetten with $350,000

6th: Steve Friedlander with $250,000

7th: Annette Obrestad with $175,000

Earlier Norwegian poker pro Annette Obrestad, who began playing poker at the age of 15 and who is the youngest person in history to win WSOP championship bracelet, plowed through a field of 160 other players to take the top spot in Event 4, the $1,100 Pot Limit Omaha for a prize of $40,000 and the distinction of being the first woman to become an Aussie Millions Champion. She began third place in chips, and systematically knocked out her other seven tablemates to go head-to-head with Billy Seri, who had to settle for second place and a purse of $31,200.

The lead up to the Aussie Millions Main Event was Event 8, the $100,000 NLHE challenge. The high stakes $100,000 buy-in shootout attracted only 24 players, but the field included such poker heavyweights as Phil Ivey, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Barry Greenstein, Tony G, Gus Hansen, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Erick Lindgren, competing for a total prize pool of $2.4 million.

It came down to a heads-up match between legendary Phil Ivey with 1,381,000 in chips and Dan Shak with a chip stack of 1,057,000. Although Ivey was eliminated in second place, the $600,000 he earned puts him over the $12 million mark in career winnings. Shak, who earned $1,200,000 for first place, may be best known as the co-winner of the 2007 Ante Up For Africa event in which he gave all his winnings back to the event organizers in order to aid desperate refugees in Darfur.