Back in 2004, the UK's Tony Bloom won this event for AU$426,500 by topping a field of 133 players. There are more players in today's starting field than the entire tournament that year, but that hasn't deterred Bloom for competing here on Day 1c.
In a recent hand, four players created a pot of 600 and saw a flop of . After the big blind had checked, Bloom bet 400, a middle-position player folded, and the button called. The big blind folded and it was heads-up action to the turn. Bloom kept the pressure on with a bet of 1,050, but he couldn't shake his opponent. When the completed the board on the river, Bloom bet 2,200 and the button snap called.
Bloom confidently rolled over , and he seemed genuinely surprised when his opponent tabled for a winning straight.
By today’s standards, the maiden Aussie Millions was quite small. Aside from the Main Event, the largest buy-in of the series’ 10 events was AUD$5,000, modest compared to the AUD$250,000 tournament that debuted last year. That first year was comprised mainly of players from the South Pacific, as well as a smattering of pros from the United Kingdom including Harry Demetriou, Ram Vaswani, Joe Beevers, and Lucy Rokach. In addition, a few Americans traveled to Melbourne including Erik Seidel, who has since become a regular at the Aussie Millions.
2003 Aussie Millions Results
Event
Winner
$360 Pot-Limit Hold’em
Luke Chezick (NZ)
$360 Limit Hold’em
Carlo Citrone (U.K.)
$1,500 Limit Hold’em
Michael Tomeny (USA)
$1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha
Sherkhan Fernood (Afghanistan)
$5,000 Heads-up No Limit Hold’em
George Mamacas (Australia)
$200 NLHE Pioneers Event
Paul Pedersen (NZ)
$1,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em
Sherkhan Fernood (Afghanistan)
$1,500 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo
Mel Judah (Australia)
$5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha
Lucy Rokach (U.K.)
$10,500 NLHE Main Event
Peter Costa (U.K.)
The first Aussie Millions Main Event attracted 122 players and created a prize pool of AUD$1,220,000. The final table ended up being a battle between Australia and the U.K., with the former having five runners in contention against the latter’s four. Appropriately, Leo Boxell of Australia squared off against the U.K.’s Peter Costa in a heads-up match considered one of the best in Aussie Millions history. It contained 14 all-in bets and in the end, the Englishman, nicknamed “Silver Fox,” took down the AUD$394,870 prize and became the first Aussie Millions champion.
Costa, who was known by many through his appearances on Late Night Poker, was certainly the big story from that first year, but it is also worth noting that two of the Hendon Mob’s four members (Ram Vaswani and Joe Beevers) made the final table, and another member, Barny Boatman, bubbled in 10th place.
Unfortunately Costa was unable to make it to this year's Aussie Million.
He was one of the surprises from last year and now he's back for more! Aussie Patrick Healy decided to register for today's Day 1 flight and so far he's sitting at a table without any known players.
Healy finished fifth in last year's Aussie Millions Main Event cashing A$300,000.
Nathaniel Read "Nate" Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, sabermetrician, psephologist, and writer. That's the first line from Silver's Wikipedia page, which shows a huge diversity in things he's done over the years. But Silver is of course best known for his correct prediction of the most recent Presidential Election in the United States.
Yesterday, the PokerNews team had a chance to talk to Silver on our podcast, and you can listen to that right here.
Silver's playing his first $10,000 buy-in poker tournament since the 2011 World Series of Poker, and he's facing none other than Mike Watson at his starting table. Watson's been having an incredible last 12 months with almost $2.5 million in live tournament earnings. His best result was a victory in the €50,000 Majestic High Roller at the WSOPE where he took home the €1,000,000 first place prize.
Australian cricket legend Shane Warne is one of the local favorites playing today. Warne faces one of the top British professionals in Stephen Chidwick who's seated to his right. Dan Shak, who finished fourth in yesterday's $100,000 event is two seats over on Warne's left. Also at this table is former November Nine finalist Steven Gee. Gee finished ninth in last year's WSOP Main Event.
Warne's biggest poker result came back in 2010 when he finished third in the the Victorian Poker Championship High Stakes Event for A$40,000.
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The tournament staff have just welcomed the players of the speakers, and also informed everyone that they're expecting over 300 players for today's field. The tournament floor here in the Crown poker room is already packed, so it'll be interesting to see the final numbers later today.
They say to save the biggest and best for last, and that seems to be the case in the Aussie Millions Main Event as traditionally Day 1c has attracted the biggest field In the 2013 edition, 157 and 196 players turned out for Days 1a and 1b respectively, and early estimates expect both of those numbers to be crushed in today’s final starting flight.
Satellites have been running nonstop to qualify players, and today will be there last chance to compete for one of poker’s most prestigious title. Right now there is even a 18-player satellite freeroll for those who qualified—like Josh “@procession” Bell and Jesse “@OnTheMac” McKenzie—through Crown Casino’s Twitter contest. Whether or not either of those players will get in remains to be seen.
Some other players we expect to see in action today are Phil Ivey; Antonio Esfandiari; Patrik Antonius; and Australian legend Shane Warne.
All of these players, and many more for that matter, look to survive seven 90-minute levels of play and punch their ticket to Day 2 alongside the 175 combined survivors from Days 1a and 1b. They include Tyron Krost, Neil Channing, Jason Mercier, James Obst, Kevin Rabichow, Ayaz Mahmood and Phillip Willcocks. However, all of those players trail Day 1a chip leader Brian Payne (299,900) and Day 1b chip leader Frank Rusnak (165,100).
Who will be the next to add their name to this prestigious list of winners?
The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be providing you updates throughout the Main Event, as well as the $250,000 Challenge, $25,000 Challenge and $1,000,000 Cash Game. Day 1c action in the Main is set to kick off at 12:30 local time, which is about an hour from now.
. After the big blind had checked, Bloom bet 400, a middle-position player folded, and the button called. The big blind folded and it was heads-up action to the 
turn. Bloom kept the pressure on with a bet of 1,050, but he couldn't shake his opponent. When the 
completed the board on the river, Bloom bet 2,200 and the button snap called.
, and he seemed genuinely surprised when his opponent tabled 
for a winning straight.
