Our correspondent Sinead Quigley has the latest from Melbourne.
The 2009 PokerNews Cup got underway in Melbourne on Friday 2nd October at 10 minutes after midday. The Main Event is a four day event with two starting days and a Day 1B repechage.
The 171 players who opted to start on day 1A included 9 players sporting the PartyPoker banner. The nine were made up of one of the Australian $3.5K online package winners Jeff Woods and six Palladium Lounge members in the form of Jason Brown, King Tung Man, Luke Marburg, Matthew Kepitis,Mark Ellis and Peter Ockenden. Stewart Scott, our newly signed Grass Roots player also opted to start day 1A, as did Latisha Wenlock one of the six players who won their seat through the NPL’s offline promotion.
It just wasn’t Stewart Scott’s day and having sat for hours seeing very few playable hands he was out (we’ll hear from Stewart soon I’m sure). The next to leave was King Tung Man. Everyone else played on until the dinner break when we lost Peter and Mark.
Luke Marburg had a strong day but had the misfortune of having his pocket jacks cracked by pocket sevens with a seven on the river – his stack was seriously compromised and he was unable to recover. Latisha’s stack needed reinforcing before end of play so during the final hand when there was a raise to 3,000, Latisha pushed all in with her 21,000 chips. Unfortunately the raiser had KK against her 88 and a king on the flop sealed her fate and she is out.
Luke Marburg (above)
So, through to Day two are Jason Brown, Matthew Kepitis and Jeff Woods.
Day 1B sees the remaining nine online qualifiers, five of the NPL seat winners and anybody from day 1A who wishes to buy back in and give it another shot hit the felt.
Jason Brown (above, through to day two)
Photographs courtesy of Gabriel Alarie.
