The Seventh Place Finisher

What a great night I had on Sunday at Crown Casino in Melbourne for the EJ Whitten Charity Poker Tournament! It was such an impressive turnout with over 300 players doing their bit to support research for prostate cancer, including some of Australia's biggest sports stars and television personalities. With the tournament being a bit of light hearted fun for charity, I really didn't focus too hard to begin with. In fact I probably only spent about 30% of each level at my seat as I was working most of the time producing this video: http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

I had been grinding a short stack for some time, until a guy wearing a Full Tilt Poker hat sat down. Billy The Croc was at my table and we started having a laugh about whether he knew what exactly that hat represented right now. Billy asked the guy about his hat and he said "oh yeah I think they're gonna close down soon". That certainly gave the table a few giggles. Mr Full Tilt ended up spewing all of his chips my way, along with a few other guys when I tripled up twice and then polished off my explosion with two aces in the hole. Before I knew it I was a chip leader with only a third of the field left, so I swapped my glass of champagne for a coffee (yes, totally incorrect for me to do after just writing this Stay Stacked article, but sometimes unexpected, desperate times lead to desperate measures!) and switched my game on properly. I had my eyes on that $15k Aussie Millions Main Event package they were giving away for first place.

During the last break of the night I met a guy named Tj. An amazing man who's doing all he can to support his friend Clint who has Cerebral Palsy. After battling years of operations and struggles with finding his direction in life, Clint discovered poker back in 2005, and it's now his passion. Clint's friends are trying all they can to raise funds to send Clint to Las Vegas for the All-in for Cerebral Palsy poker tournament at the Venetian this December. You can read more about Clint's story and make donations to help Clint follow his dream of visiting Sin City here: http://www.clintsallinforcp.com. Tj's efforts to help his friend is really admirable, good on ya mate! After the break I was then at Clint's table, but unfortunately he bust soon after in 65th place. It would have been awesome to see him make it to the final table, but still a great achievement, congrats Clint!

In the end I took 7th place. I was so wrapped just to have made it to the final table, which I shared with David Steike and Graeme Putt and even a couple of friends Jessica Hachem and Luke Tunnecliff. For seventh place I won myself a seat into the $1k Aussie Millions Opening Event! I was very happy with that to say the least, when playing a charity tournament you certainly don't expect to walk away with something like that! Now I'm so excited to play my very first Aussie Millions event! Bring on January