The 2009 Aussie Millions held at the Crown Casino in Melbourne has finished with an unknown Australian poker player winning the No-Limit Hold’em Main Event.  Stewart Scott has emerged from obscurity to win the biggest poker tournament in the Southern Hemisphere.  He was rewarded with 2 million Australian dollars and a gold bracelet together with his place in poker history as 2009 Aussie Millions Main Event Champion.

A field of 680 poker players contested the main event including 2007 champion Gus Hansen, defending champion Alexander Kostritsyn together with other big names such as Patrik Antonius, Barny Boatman, Joe Hachem, Kelly Kim and the first WSOP Europe Champion, Annette Obrestad.

Of these players, Kelly Kim and Annette Obrestad just missed out on reaching the final table with Englishman Barny Boatman perhaps being the biggest name to make it to the final table.

The eight players that qualified for the final table and their chip counts at the start of the final table poker play were: Stewart Scott (4,520,000 chips), Peter Rho (2,420,000 chips), Rajkumar Ramakrishnan (2,050,000 chips), Zach Gruneberg (1,355,000 chips), Sam Capra (1,161,000 chips), Elliot Smith (1,120,000 chips), Richard Ashby (658,000 chips), Barny Boatman (349,000 chips).  So, Stewart Scott had the lead at the start of the final table and ended it as champion.  

Barny Boatman and Richard Ashby were the British representatives at the final table but were eliminated in seventh and eighth place respectively as they were already the short stacks at the start of play.  Boatman picked up 100,000 Australian dollars and Ashby’s prize was 100,000 Australian dollars.

The next two players to head out of the tournament were satellite qualifiers Zach Gruneberg and Sam Capra in quick succession.  Gruneberg’s sixth position earned him 210,000 Australian dollars and Capra was awarded 300,000 Australian dollars for fifth.

The play then slowed down with longer gaps between the eliminations.  Eventually Rajkumar Ramakrishnan went out in fourth place taking the 400,000 Australian dollar prize.  

The three-handed action between Stewart Scott, Peter Rho and Elliot Smith lasted a long time with 70 hands being played before Elliot Smith was eliminated.  His third place gave him prize money of 700,000 Australian dollars.

Going into the heads-up, Scott had a big lead with over 10 million chips compared to Rho who had just under 3 million.  The heads-up didn’t take long to be decided and it was pocket aces which won

the title for Stewart Scott, as he brought the title back to Australasia for the first time since 2006.  Rho’s runners-up prize was 1 million Australian dollars. 

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