The Pinnacle: Aussie Millions Ends, Run It Once And Loaning Debates Begin

I hope someone from Hasbro was watching the Aussie Millions Main Event livestream because it produced a cracking Trivial Pursuit question for when Santa’s little elves start chucking them into his sledge come December.
aussie-millions-2019
Question: “Name the person who won the Aussie Millions Main Event without eliminating a single player.”
Answer: “Bryn Kenney.”
822 LAGS, TAGS and WAGS competed in the AUD 10,000 Main Event smashing its attendance record for the second successive year. Kenney started the final table with the shortest stack of the lot (18 bb) but doubled up twice to put him amongst the favourites to land his first Main Event title.
The chip lead didn’t arrive until he was three-handed, and it was during his fist fight with Andrew Hinrichsen and Mike Del Vecchio (who was making the final table for the second successive year) that the action stopped. The trio stepped away to cut a deal, and Kenney returned as the champion in a damp squib of a final scene.
Final Table Results
1. Bryn Kenney – $923,269*
2. Mike Del Vecchio – $922,953*
3. Andrew Hinrichsen – $796,410*
4. Clinton Taylor – $350,417
5. Mathew Wakeman – $275,908
6. Gyeong Byeong Lee – $224,180
7. Hamish Crawshaw – $175,571
*Indicates a three-way deal
Kenney jumped straight into the AUD 100,000 Challenge but wasn’t so lucky. The event pulled in a 42-entrant field, the third highest in the event’s 14-year history, and Cary Katz won the $1,066,867 first prize after beating Johannes Becker, heads-up.
It’s the second time Katz has won a $100k event after winning the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) version in 2018. Rainer Kempe continued his excellent run of form finishing fourth to take the early lead in the Global Poker Index (GPI) 2019 Player of the Year race, and it was fantastic to see the GPI Ladies #1, Kristen Bicknell, firing multiple AUD 100k bullets on her way to a sixth-place finish.
Final Table Results
1. Cary Katz – $1,066,867
2. Johannes Becker – $681,610
3. Abraham Passet – $444,528
4. Rainer Kempe – $325,987
5. Jack Salter – $329,280
6. Kristen Bicknell – $207,446
And there was an AUD 25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event for the first time. 67-players gave it a shot, and Anton Morgenstern beat the lot to win the $382,061 first prize after beating Farid Jattin, heads-up. It was another excellent performance for Jattin, who made the final table of the $25,000 buy-in PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship (PSPC) finishing seventh for $746,000.
Poker Central Power Rankings; Run It Once Launch; And More

Bryn Kenney’s victory in Melbourne ensured the top berth in the Poker Central Power Rankings this week.

Sitting in second place is Phil Galfond, who finally launched Run It Once (RIO) Poker in public beta mode, and Chris Kruk was one of the first players to live stream RIO Poker action on Twitch, and the former partypoker MILLIONS $25k High Roller winner agreed to hand all donations and subs to Dan Smith’s next Charity Drive.
Daniel Negreanu made the number three spot without doing anything (perhaps they gave it to him for NOT creating a war on Twitter?) Cary Katz picked up a fourth place spot for his performance Down Under, and I assume Phil Hellmuth made the top five because of this:

Poker Central Power Rankings

1. Bryn Kenney
2. Phil Galfond
3. Daniel Negreanu
4. Cary Katz
5. Phil Hellmuth
Eli Elezra Successful But Painful, Book Launch; Bill Perkins Celebrates 50-Years on the Planet and Joins Vegan Debate
With Negreanu having a quiet time on social media, the baton in the race to piss people off fell to the unlikeliest of poker players.
Eli Elezra hopped onto 2+2 to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) in a bid to market his new biography ‘Pulling The Trigger,’ and what a disaster it turned out to be.


Here are the cliffs:
Someone asks Ezra where he got his money from to play high stakes, and during his response, Ezra comments that he always has 100% of himself, and always pays his debts – cue Cole South.
South comes onto 2+2 and states that Ezra owes him $40,000 of a $100,000 loan given to Ezra in 2010. It then emerges that Ezra also owes Shaun Deeb some money. Then Abe Mosseri breaks radio silence and tells all and sundry that Ezra owes him $853,000 and that Ezra had threatened his family.
Ezra eventually makes a statement on 2+2; talks to PokerNews and the ChipRace Podcast to confirm that he does owe South the money and they have since come to a satisfactory arrangement. Ezra admits that he does owe Mosseri that obscene amount of money and that his safety has been threatened, pointing the finger at Mosseri’s partner.
During the statements, Ezra also said that he is on good terms with Deeb despite owing him some money, but I wonder if that’s still the case after Ezra appeared on Poker Central’s Dolly’s Game where each man pays $50,000 to take a seat.


Bill Perkins is celebrating his 50th birthday in style this week. Most people book a room in a pub for a birthday party; Perkins rented the entire Necker Island from Richard Branson.

 

Happy bday to The PERK!!! @billperkins knows how to turn 50 ????????????

A post shared by Antonio Esfandiari (@magicantonio) on


It takes time to blow out 50-candles, so Perkins decided to hop onto Twitter and get involved in the vegan debate started by this tweet from Doug Polk.


The tweet got the effective altruist community in a headspin with the likes of Liv Boeree and Justin Bonomo duelling with the outspoken carnivore. Somewhere along the way broadcaster, David Tuchman, suggested a vegan prop bet, asking how much people would need to go vegan for a year. Dan Smith was briefly in the running at $200,000, but eventually, Jamie Kerstetter fell into the crosshairs saying she would give it a bash for $10,000. Perkins took the bet. Should Kerstetter fail then she has to do 100 hours community service at Perkins’ pleasure.
And we will end with a vegan high roller as Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger took a timeout from producing YouTube videos on emotional intelligence to stream a few online poker sessions on twitch, and won a tournament playing on WSOP.com on only his second night.
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.