The inaugural World Poker Tour (WPT) Australia at The Star Gold Coast was a grand success. The marquee festival featured 10 events from September 27 through October 7 with buy-ins ranging from A$330 to A$5,000 and it drew impressive turnout across almost all events on its schedule. The biggest highlight of the festival was its A$2,500 Main Event and it drew a total of 658 entries to create a record prize pool of A$1,480,500 (~$1,002,447), which was eventually shared by top 83 finishers.
The lion’s share of the prizepool went to the Melbourne-based Hari Varma who won the inaugural title for A$274,247. As expected, the event saw many notables and some of them who managed deep runs but fell short of the final table were 2005 WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem (16th for $10,225) and Shane Vijayaram, who shoved king-queen against pocket queens of Australian cricket legend Shane Warne. Vijayaram exited in 14th ($12,280), while Warne was out in 12th place for $15,428.
Coming back to Varma, he took the chip lead into the final table after busting Joshua Bell in 9th place. He kept his pressure on and continued to chip up as other players struggled to chip-up. The next eliminations in Josh Emerton, Chris Barker, Luke Stewart, Travis Endersby and Louis Yin brought the field down to three players. Varma strengthened his position further by eliminating Julius Colman in 3rd place and entered the heads-up with George Psarras as the chip leader.
Varma began heads up with about 2-to-1 chip lead and it was over in just few hands. The final hand saw Psarras holding 9d 3c and Varma holding Qd 3s. The board ran out 8c 3h 2c 3d Qh, giving Varma full house to win the inaugural main event title and AUD $274,247 (~US $185,693) in top prize.
WPT India 2019 Kicks Off on 15th October 2019!
For all the WPT Fans out there, WPT India 2019 is just a few days away. The biggest extravaganza of the year kicks off on 15th October next week and will continue till 21st October 2019. This time around, the stakes higher and the stars are bigger. Yes, you heard it right! This year’s Main Event will feature a whopping INR 3.25 Cr. GTD prizepool, making it India’s largest guaranteed Main Event.
Apart from a hefty prize money, the eventual champion of the main event will also get a WPT Main Tour seat worth $3,500 and points in the WPT Asia-Pacific POY race. This time, the festival will have bigger stars in attendance,including the poker legend – Robert Mizrachi. That is not all, there will be players party and a lot more. So, come join India’s biggest poker festival at the Deltin Royale, Goa!
Final 9 Payouts:
1st: Hari Varma – AUD $274,247 (~US $185,693)
2nd: George Psarras – AUD $192,273 (~US $130,188)
3rd: Julius Colman – AUD $123,933 (~US $83,915)
4th: Louis Yin – AUD $90,207 (~US $61,079)
5th: Travis Endersby – AUD $69,139 (~US $46,814)
6th: Luke Stewart – AUD $55,326 (~US $37,461)
7th: Chris Barker – AUD $45,851 (~US $31,046)
8th: Josh Emerton – AUD $36,509 (~US $24,720)
9th: Joshua Bell – AUD $27,419 (~US $18,565)