Crown Melbourne attracts approximately 18 million local, interstate and international visitors each year. It is one of the largest entertainment complexes in the world and is the home of the renowned ‘Aussie Millions Poker Championship’ along with the largest poker room outside North America.
“This exciting partnership brings together two industry leaders, and two strong brands, to create a premier poker event in this region,” said Crown Melbourne’s Chief Executive Officer, Greg Hawkins.
“Our agreement firmly aligns with our objective of attracting the very best local and international players, all vying for a coveted WSOP bracelet. We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved with the Aussie Millions and look forward to featuring WSOP Asia Pacific on our poker calendar in April 2013.”

The agreement marks the first time the WSOP is exporting its prestigious tournament series to Australia, and marks just the second expansion of the 42-year-old brand, after the advent of WSOP Europe in 2007. To date, WSOP gold bracelets have only been awarded in Las Vegas (1970-2011), London (2007-2010) and France (2011). Crown’s agreement with the WSOP includes provisions for international television production of the event and is expected to be shown globally on ESPN.

Legions of locals have been swept up in the Australian poker boom that was ignited when Melbournian and Crown ambassador Joe Hachem became the 2005 World Series of Poker Champion, scooping up $7.5 million in prize money for his efforts.
“It’s thrilling to think the World Series of Poker is coming to Australian soil,” said Joe Hachem. “I know first-hand what a life-changing moment winning the WSOP gold bracelet was and how it served as a catalyst for the growth of poker in Australia and Asia. It will be a dream come true to host a worldwide poker event such as this at Crown. I can’t wait.”
Crown’s CEO Greg Hawkins further added, “This initiative will provide Crown with significant exposure in Asia, Europe and America, and forms an integral part of Crown’s global marketing strategy to attract further international visitors to Australia and Crown Melbourne.”

The complete schedule and dates are expected to be announced later this year.

Charania, 27, from Chicago, Illinois, beat fellow qualifier Lucille Cailly heads-up to take the title. Cailly, 29, from Paris, was the first woman ever to make the final of the EPT Grand Final and took €1,050,000 for her runner-up finish.

Today’s final also featured Italian Poker Tour San Remo champion Sergio Castelluccio (4th for €400,000) and EPT Warsaw finalist Clayton Mozdzen (7th for €185,000).

As well as his cash prize, Charania received a bracelet worth €25,000. He also secured a seat in tomorrow’s EPT Tournament of Champions €100,000 free-roll. A total of 40 EPT champions are set to play.

Charania took up poker while studying finance at the University of Illinois. Since then he’s won over $3.5 million playing online, including a SCOOP side event victory in 2010, and just over $500,000 in live events. Today’s victory gives him by far his biggest live result. He said: “I feel great. This is my first trophy – I don’t think they give you these when you win a tournament online. I’ve spent two months playing poker in Europe and this is only the second time I’ve made the antes.” Charania, who his seat in a €33 re-buy satellite on PokerStars, beat Cailly when his QQ stood up against the French pro’s AK. The pair were among 160 players who won their seat to the event online on PokerStars.

A total of 665 players from 54 countries competed in this season’s EPT Grand Final Main Event creating a total prize pool of €6,650,000. A total of 97 players were paid; EPT Prague champion Martin Finger and American Andrew Badecker went out at the same time on the bubble so shared the €15,000 prize for 96th place between them.

Among those to make the money were Justin Bonomo, who won the €100,000 Super High Roller at the start of the Grand Final for €1,640,000, plus Team PokerStars Pros Matthias De Meulder, Richard Toth, Sandra Naujoks, Angel Guillen, Pierre Neuville, Max Martinez and Nacho Barbero.

The €10,000 Main Event was one of 37 tournaments taking place at Le Sporting Casino in Monaco as part of the eighth EPT Grand Final “Festival of Poker”, from April 23 to May 1. Season 8 has taken players all over Europe, as well as to the Bahamas in January for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

In other EPT Grand Final side events, Team PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren beat Melanie Weisner to take down the €5,000 NL Heads-Up event (the first-ever all-female EPT final); German player Khiem Nguyen won the €1k PLO side event for €43,700, thus securing his EPT Omaha Player of the Year title at tomorrow night’s Awards ceremony; American Daniel Smith won both the €5,000 NL and €5,000 NL Turbo side events for combined winnings of €412,150 and German pro Marvin Rettenmaier won the €2,000 NL event for €118,330. The €25,000 High Roller is now in the money with Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu, Philipp Gruissem and Phil Ivey vying to take the chip lead through to tomorrow’s final table.

A total of 45 players remain including Team PokerStars Pros Liv Boeree, Daniel Negreanu, Viktor Blom (who won the $100k PCA Super High Roller), David Williams and Max Lykov along with PCA High Roller winner Alex Bilokur
from Russia, EPT London High Roller winner Philipp Gruissem from
Germany, EPT Campione High Roller winner Govert Metaal from Holland and EPT San Remo champion Andrey Pateychuk from Russia. There were a total of 133 entries for the High Roller (including 16 re-entries) creating a total prize pool of €3,325,000; 14 places get paid with €1,080,000 for first.

GENERAL INFO
A total of 37 events have been taking place this week in Le Sporting Casino at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel. The highlights of this season’s EPT Grand Final festival have been the €100,000 Super High Roller (won by American Justin Bonomo for €1,640,000), the €10,000 Main Event – down to final table today, and the €25,000 High Roller (now on Day 2 with 45 players left). More than 160 players won their seat to the Main Event online on PokerStars. The EPT Grand Final is the culmination of a 13-stop season that’s taken us to the Bahamas and all over Europe.

Click on image to enlarge

In this unique format taking place fortnightly from 29th April, you can play against Poker Channel presenters on Poker Heaven, and then watch the action just days later on The Poker Channel, with the same presenters reviewing the tournament. In addition to €1000 guaranteed in the prizepool, there is also €100 prize to each player who knocks out either of the bounty players, who will be the presenters themselves.

Our Bounty Players include:

* PCE_LAURA: Poker Channel Presenter Laura Cornelius
* PCE_ANNA: Poker Channel Presenter Anna Fowler
* PCE_STEVE: Poker Channel Presenter Steve “Hilly The Fish” Hill
* PCE_TREVOR: Poker Channel Presenter Trevor Harris

The tournament will take place at 19:10 BST and buy-in is just €8+0.80, providing fantastic value. You can however qualify tonight and every night for FREE in the freeroll qualifiers.

No deposit is required to play these freerolls which take place nightly at 19:10 BST, and the top five finishers in each freeroll will win entry into the final on the 29th.

You can find out more details of the TV Bounty Tournament and freeroll satellites by clicking here.

Tune in and watch the Poker Channel Bounty Tournament at these times (or look out for it at other times in local listings) and watch it on demand on our videos page

UK & Eire (BST)

Thursday 3rd May 11.30pm
Sunday 6th 11pm

Europe (CET)

Thursday 3rd 2200
Saturday 5th 2200

Among those who will be returning for Day 2 are Team PokerStars Pros
Ville Wahlbeck, Vanessa Selbst, Richard Toth, Pierre Neuville, Jude
Ainsworth, George Danzer, Matthias De Meulder, Toni Judet, Joe Cada
and Joao Nunes as well as PokerStars Team Online’s Anders Berg and Mickey Petersen from Denmark, who won EPT Copenhagen.

JUSTIN BONOMO WINS €100K SUPER HIGH ROLLER FOR €1,640,000

American poker pro Justin Bonomo, better-known to many as his online poker alias “ZeeJustin” hs woken up in his luxurious Monaco-based hotel room €1,640,000 richer thanks to winning the €100,000 buy-in Super High Roller event at the European Poker Tour Grand Final.
This was the largest buy-in poker tournament ever held in Europe and poker’s biggest names turned out in force to participate in it. Amongst the 38 entrants were the likes of Tom “durrrr” Dwan, John Juanda, Mike “Timex” McDonald and the legendary Phil Ivey but none of these players made it through to the eight-handed final table.
The final table read like a who’s who of tournament poker and any one of them would have been a worthy champion but as it happens it was the man who started the day with 40% of the chips in play, Bonomo, who walked away with that title. The first player to bust out was the Team PokerStars pro Eugene Katchalov who three-bet shoved his seven big blind stack into the middle holding ace-six only to run slap bang into the middle of the pocket queens of Masa Kagawa.
Thirty minutes later the money bubble had burst. The 2010 World Series of Poker Main champion Jonathan Duhamel was the player to burst one of the biggest money bubbles in the history of the game when his KsQs could not such out against Triple Crown winner Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier’s pocket aces. Duhamel’s exit meant the surviving players had locked up at least €310,000 for their efforts.
Daniel Negreanu was the first player to receive some prize money, the popular Canadian busting out mere minutes after Duhamel had become the bubble boy. Joining Negreanu at the cashier’scage was the aforementioned Kagawa, then Patrik Antonius and finally ElkY; that last exit setting up a one-on-one battle between Bonomo and the highly talented German pro Tobias Reinkemeier.
The heads-up battle was a rather one-sided affair as Bonomo held a massive 9,580,000 to 1,675,000 chip advantage over his opponent but it still took him 30-minutes and a coinflip to send him to the rail. The final hand saw Reinkemeier open to 125,000 then Bonomo three-bet to 350,000. Reinkemeier paused for a few moments before moving all-in for his remaining 1,500,000 stack and Bonomo instantly made the call. Reinkemeier flipped over 4s4c and was actually in front of Bonomo’s AdQc but that soon changed as the flop came down Ah-Kc-5d followed by the 10s turn and 7d river to bust Reinkemeier and gift Bonomo the title of Super High Roller champion.
EPT Grand Final Super High Roller Results
1st: Justin Bonomo – €1,640,000
2nd: Tobias Reinkemeier – €1,064,000
3rd: Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier – €621,000
4th: Patrik Antonius – €443,000
5th: Masa Kagawa – €354,500
6th: Daniel Negreanu – €310,000

This was de Koster’s biggest live cash, second to taking home $44,000 in the WSOP Main Event in 2010. “This is amazing,” said Patrick, who is from The Netherlands. “I’ve been thinking for some time that I have wanted to buy a small apartment and now I am able to do this,“ he added.

“Even if I hadn’t won I cannot say enough how much I enjoyed this event – it was so friendly and brilliantly organized. The only regret is I didn’t get to see more of Marbella as I have always been in the casino. I cannot really complain though!”

Runner-up was 28-year-old UK pro Peter Linton. At the start of the final table expectations were high for a home win with four Spanish players in good positions. The highly rated Antonio Gonzalez “jonwayne69″ was big favourite as the chip leader and the player with the biggest reputation. The first players were eliminated quickly but four handed the action got very cagey. “The key point for me today was when my KK beat AA,” said Patrick as he summarised his performance. Eventually it was Patrick’s AK dominating Linton’s K10 that ended a speedy heads up that lasted less than half an hour. Previously de Koster had dispatched Danish pro Philip Porter in fourth and Spaniard Jose Carlos Lopez in fifth in a three way all in.

The action was live streamed through http://es.partypoker.com/blog/wpt-marbella/wpt-marbella-live-stream with commentary and live reporting for the event in Spanish language only covered by the team at http://www.poker-red.com/

Results – WPT National Series Marbella Main Event, presented by PartyPoker.com

1st – Patrick de Koster (Neth) 150,000
2nd – Peter Linton (UK) 82,000
3rd – Jose Carlos Lopez (Esp) 54,500
4th – Philip Porter (Den) 38,800
5th – Inma Marti Torres (Esp) 29,000
6th – Antonio Gonzalez Miranda (Esp) 22,950
7th – Jose Luis Plaza (Esp) 17,200
8th – Daniel Keller (Ger) 12,850

See here for more details www.pokerheaven.com/tournaments/sunday-head-hunter

A total of 38 players entered, with five re-entries on Day 1 – from Isaac Haxton, Bill Perkins, Dieter Albrecht and Justin Bonomo as well as Leon Tsourkernik from the Czech Republic who bought another bullet after winning €100,000 playing craps during the dinner break. The total number of buy-ins currently stands at 43, creating a giant prize pool of more than €4 million. Some of the players who did not make it through yesterday, but have a chance to re-enter today, include Gus Hansen, Sam Trickett, Jason Mercier, Govert Metaal, Mike McDonald, Daniel Cates, Artem Litvinov and (again) Leon Tsoukernik.

The Super High Roller is just the first of 37 events that will play out this week in Le Sporting Casino’s stunning Salle des Etoiles room. The highlight of the EPT Grand Final festival is the €10,000 Main Event which starts tomorrow (April 25) at 12:00; at least 280 players are already registered including more than 150 who won their seat online. This is the championship tournament of a 13-stop season that’s been to the Bahamas and all over Europe. It’s now back in Monaco for the first time since Season 6.

The next and final stop for EPT Season 8 is the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final. This flagship Festival of Poker is running from April 23 to May 1, 2012 at Le Sporting Casino in Monaco and kicks off with the €100k Super High Roller on Monday