PokerNews Cup: Online Faction Wins Live-vs-Online Battle and Day 1 of the Tony G Celebrity Bounty Event
Action continued today Down Under as the Pokernews Cup continued to build momentum going into the championship event. The most recent action featured continuation of the PokerNetwork.com Live vs Online Invitational Challenge and the kick-off of the Tony G Celebrity Shootout Bounty Event.
In case you missed the first round of play in the Live vs Online Invitational Challenge, the online faction took a commanding lead of 690 to 180 after winning the majority of heads-up matches during the first two rounds. When players returned today for the shootout part of the event, the live team hoped to stage a remarkable comeback.
Although plenty of action took place early in the day, the live team could not recover from its first-day losses, giving the online team the overall win, 950 to 790. It literally wasn't in the cards for the live players despite posting the day’s top three finishers. In the end, the live team's Peter Aristidou defeated Dave Lee heads-up to claim the shootout title. The winner for overall points champion was the live team's Ben Savage (155 points), who narrowly defeated Andrew Jeffreys, Steve Leonard and Aristidou, who each logged 150 points.
The day's other action featured Day 1 of the Tony G Celebrity Bounty Event with 169 players hoping to win the $20,520 first-place prize and the chance to collect one of the 17 $500 bounties offered in this unique event. Because of the size of the field, the event started as a multi-table tournament until the field reached the final 32 players.
Notables in the field included Emad Tahtouh, "Toothpick" Tony Kambouris, Bruno Portaro, Bill Jordanou, Tony Hachem, Sam Khouiss, Chris Chronis, Ben Savage, Andrew Demetriou, Andrew Jeffreys, Roy Vandersluis, Michael Guzzardi, Steve Topakas, Dennis Huntly, Matthew "OnMyVPlates" Pearson, Kerry Stead and Pokernews.com head honcho Tony G whom Lynn Gilmartin caught up with during the event.
The biggest story of the day's play was the solid performances of Andrew Jeffreys and Ben Savage fighting to their second final table in two days. Unfortunately for Tony G and Ben Delaney, dreams of a first-place finish ended when they finished 11th and 16th respectively.
Because of some tough tables early on, play moved quickly throughout the day, and players reached the final table before day's end. Leading the way going into the final table is Bruce Ngyuen with 164,700 chips. Action resumes tomorrow at the beautiful Crown Casino at 4:00 p.m.
The final table:
Bruce Nguyen - 164,700
Nick Haidaris - 156,000
Angelo Prifti - 125,000
William Skountzos - 110,000
Andrew Jeffreys - 87,700
Riku Koivurinne - 77,700
George Dionisopoulous -53,600
Ben Savage - 48,700
PokerNews.com will have all the action for you as it happens in our extensive live update pages also be sure to follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.
