Free US Poker

Wherever you go in the sporting and gaming world, there seem to be pivotal characters that spark the public imagination. In Chess it was Bobby Fischer who basically single handed ended the Russian domination of the World Chess Championships. In boxing in the 1980’s then it was Mike Tyson who become World Champion at such a young age. Poker as well has its ground making characters and Chris Moneymaker winning the 2003 main event at the World Series of Poker really sparked a huge online boom.

In Australia though they kind of had two booms because in 2005, Australian poker player and pro Joe Hachem won the main event at the World Series of Poker becoming an instant millionaire in the process and also a household name amongst poker players! This led to a huge surge in popularity in poker in Australia and the knock on effect from this was an increase in poker tournaments.

The Australian Poker Championships are actually older than many people thinks and started as long ago as 1998 and were called The Crown Australian Poker Championships. This became known as the “Aussie Millions” in later years when prize money escalated. The Aussie Millions also hosts the largest buy-in of any poker tournament in the world with the $100,000 buy-in high roller event.

The main event at The Aussie Millions though is the $10,000 No Limit Texas Hold’em event. In 2007, Gus Hansen really brought fame to this event when he won it and picked up $1.5 million for doing so. But what made this event so ground breaking was that Hansen was carrying a tape recorder with him and recording every single hand. He went on to write one of the most entertaining poker books that I have ever read when he wrote “Every Hand Revealed”.

When you consider that he won the tournament at the same time then it was a ground breaking moment for poker in Australia and the popularity of the Aussie Millions. This year’s event paid even more for first place and Australian Tyron Krost picked up a cool $2 million for his success this year with Sorrel Mizzi and Annette Obrestad also making the final table. When Gus Hansen won in 2007 then it was surprising to see only one Australian player make the final but that has changed over the last few years.

In 2008, no fewer than five home players made the final seven with three in 2009 and two this year. The event has grown so significantly recently that the Aussie Millions is now the sixth largest poker tournament in the world in terms of prize money and coming from an event that only had $74,000 in prize money as recently as 1998 then that is some achievement. So of all the places to go for a poker vacation then I cannot think of anywhere better than Australia and it is such a beautiful country that even if you don’t manage to show a profit, the trip will still have been more than worth it!