Congratulations to Patrick Mahoney, Winner of the ANZPT Perth Main Event ($120,000)!
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The second stop on Season 6 of the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT), and the first stop of 2014, has just come to a close at Crown Perth as the USA’s Patrick Mahoney was crowned the ANZPT Perth champion!
The final table featured seven Australians, and two from the USA, one of which was the eventual victor Mahoney. This is Mahoney’s first major live tournament win and the AUD$120,000 first-place prize is added to just over US$400,000 in previous scores. Mahoney tells us he will be heading to Sydney in a couple of weeks where he will try and win back-to-back ANZPT titles.
The final table began around nine hours ago and in the end, it took just over two hours for the first player to be eliminated. It was Justin Walch who was the ninth-place finisher. Australian poker veteran Vesko Zmukic was ground down to just a few big blinds on several occasions, but kept doubling up during the first few levels. Zmukic couldn’t hang on forever though and eventually fell to the rail in eighth place.
The start-of-day chip leader Paul Murray had a rotten time at the final table. First he lost most of his chips to fellow big-stack Scott Davies in a set-over-set situation, then he finished in seventh place when he lost the rest to Dean Blatt
Just moments after Murray hit the rail, Matthew Rolfe joined him in sixth place. The action didn’t slow down from here as recent Aussie Millions 14th place finisher Sal Fazzino was quickly eliminated in fifth place.
Four-handed play would see the action once again reach a bit of a lull as it would be almost two hours before another player hit the rail. Eventually it was Brian Mcallister who was eliminated in fourth place.
Right before three-handed play was about to begin, Blatt asked if Davies and Mahoney wanted to look at the numbers for a deal. Mahoney declined and so the action kicked back off. Blatt was the short stack at this point, but soon regained plenty of chips and once they were more even, the talks of a deal re-emerged. The players decided instead of doing a deal they would flatten the payout structure, basically making it so the third-place finisher was guaranteed at least $10,000 more.
Not long after the payout restructure, Davies lost a big preflop all in pot against Blatt and was left very short. Davies then lost the rest of his chips a couple of hands later and was out in third place, collecting $57,400 and with that, the tournament was down to two.
At the beginning of heads-up, Blatt had just over 3 million in chips to Mahoney’s stack of just around 1.7 million and at this point the players once again discussed a deal. The deal was cut short when the Crown Perth management deemed it was taking too long and so the original payout restructure remained intact.
With the cards back in the air it wouldn’t take long for the tournament to be all over as Blatt was the runner-up, taking home $86,100 and Patrick Mahoney was crowned the champion!
Congratulations to all the final table players on their effort, but more importantly to Patrick Mahoney for winning the ANZPT Perth title and $120,000 to go along with it!
ANZPT Perth Final Table Payouts
| Place | Player | Prize (AUD) |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Patrick Mahoney | $120,000 |
| 2nd | Dean Blattt | $86,100 |
| 3rd | Scott Davies | $57,400 |
| 4th | Brian Mcallister | $37,100 |
| 5th | Sal Fazzino | $30,700 |
| 6th | Matthew Rolfe | $25,600 |
| 7th | Paul Murray | $20,500 |
| 8th | Vesko Zmukic | $16,400 |
| 9th | Justin Walch | $12,300 |
Our thanks go out to ANZPT President Danny McDonagh and the rest of the team at the ANZPT, along with Debb Wyatt and the staff at Crown Perth for their wonderful hospitality! Always a pleasure coming to Perth.
The next stop on the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour is ANZPT Sydney, which runs from March 20th – 24th at The Star in New South Wales. The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be at that event providing more live updates, so join us then!