Poker Stars, Snow, and Bird Poo on Day One in Queenstown

The winter wonderland that is Queenstown, New Zealand in June is once again playing host to some of the biggest names on the Australasian circuit with the PokerStars ANZPT rolling into town.

After a two day cameo up in Auckland that saw 15 players qualify through to join the main field on day three, the tournament officially got underway with Day 1A at SkyCity Queenstown yesterday. The big story of the day was Michael Spilkin’s run to the chip lead, but it wasn’t without a little twist of good fortune. Doing nothing to dispel the old wives tale that becoming the victim of bird poo is good luck, Spilkin endured the embarrassment of having a bird relieve itself upon him, before cleaning up and chipping up at the tables to the tune of 103,925. Also among the 24 players that survived day 1A were Lee Nelson (37,700), James Bills (36,850), Julian Cohen (33,325), Hugh Cohen (27,725), Rennie Carnevale (9,800), Joel Cohen (6,700), and Scott Kerr (5,025).

No one would get close to Spilkin’s count coming out of day 1b, which was played today.  New Zealand’s Jackson Zheng was the flight chip leader with 74,075 in chips. Notable names that will also play tomorrow include John Maklouf (49,925), Chris Levick (37,725), Matthew Pearson (31,300), Raj Ramakrishnan (30,775), Andrew Scarf (26,550), Jie Gao (20,025), Julius Colman (19,825), Jason Gray (18,725), Bruno Portaro (6,500), and Tony Hachem (4,825).

The weather is predicted to snow through the weekend in Queenstown and that’s favourable for Jonathan Karamalikis, Daniel Neilson, Aaron Benton, and Simon Watt who all fell on day one of the tournament.

In total 56 players will return to the felt tomorrow, with the survivors of day two, to be joined by the 15 players who qualified from Auckland for day three on Saturday. In all the multi-casino tournament raised a field of 119 players from 14 countries, for a prize pool of NZ$267,750. Interestingly enough there are more Australians in the final field than New Zealand entries. The winner of the tournament will take home NZ$73,630.

Check back tomorrow evening for all the action from day two of the PokerStars ANZPT Queenstown.