2011 January 25, Elaine Chaivarlis

Tuesday concluded the Day 1 flights of the 2011 Aussie Millions Main Event. After three Day 1s, a total of 721 players handed over the AUD$10,600 to get their shot at taking home the title. Those 721 players created a total prize pool of AUD$7,210,000, with first place taking home an astounding AUD$2,00,000. Two players will be made millionaires at the end of this event, as second place will be taking home AUD$1,035,000.

Day 1c saw 274 players enter the Crown Poker Room and take their seats. Among them were local hopefuls James Obst, Matthew Pearson, Tony Hachem, and Peter Aristidou. Joining them were Full Tilt Poker Red Pros James Bord, Matthew Jarvis, Peter Jetten and Simon Watt.

When all was bagged and tagged, 109 players made it through the day, to combine with the 83 from Day 1a and the 80 from Day 1b, giving Day 2 a total number of 240 runners.

Australia’s Oliver Keefe came out of no where to bag the largest number of chips at the end of the day, 198,200. That’s good enough to give him the overall chip lead going in to Day 2. He’s not going to have it easy though, Erick Lindgren, chip leader from Day 1a is just behind him on the leaderboard with 186,200. Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey are also looming with 176,500, and 134,200 respectively.

The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be there to bring you all the action from Day 2 of the Main Event, so keep it locked to the Live Reporting Page for all the updates.

Million Dollar Cash Game

The second day of high-stakes action kicked off around 4:00 p.m. Tuesday inside Studio 3 at Crown Casino. The Million Dollar Cash Game cast included Patrik Antonius, Justin Smith, Tom Dwan, Andrew Feldman, Mike Matusow, David Benyamine, Erik Cajelais, and David Oppenheim and the game was $400/$800 with a $1,000 ante. All the players started with a starting stack of $100,000. About two hours after play began, Phil Ivey took Smith’s place, and while two of the Chinese businessmen visited the set, Tom Dwan just couldn’t close the deal in getting them to sit down. The big winners of the second session were Matusow, Oppenheim and Feldman. Cajelais and Smith each lost two $100k buy-ins, and Ivey played for less than an hour.

Want to check out the play-by-play? You can, on the Live Reporting Page.

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