• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016
• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Results
• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Winner
• Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Winners

Aussie Millions 2016: Steve O’Dwyer wins the LK Boutique $250k Challenge! Aussie Millions 2016: LK Boutique $250,000 Challenge Live Updates. Ari Engel wins 2016 Aussie Millions Main Event. Aussie Millions 2016: Final Table Live Updates. The most recent of those title runs came in the 2016 Aussie Millions LK Boutique $250,000 Challenge. O’Dywer topped a field of 16 entries in the quarter-million AUD buy-in super high roller.

The focus of the poker world shifts down South once again, as the Aussie Millions is returning to the Crown Casino in Melbourne on January 17th. Poker’s biggest names tend to show up for the events in the Australian summer.

APPT9 Aussie Millions: Phil Ivey wins his third LK Boutique $250K Challenge. Joshua Bell 5 years ago. 'Congratulations to Phil Ivey for winning the LK Boutique $250,000 Challenge!' Crown Poker TD Joel Williams announced over the speakers of the feature table here.

Last year Australian poker took a devastating blow with the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016 passing and effectively banning online poker rooms in the continent nation.

But this doesn’t affect the mood of the organizers of the Aussie Millions. In fact, according to tournament director Joel Williams, they expect it to be bigger than ever since they have seen a steady growth in players in the past few years that they believe will not be stifled by the online ban. They’re aiming to top last year’s record, a total 7,059 entrants in the tournament series.

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016

The Aussie Millions will have the same number of events as last year, 26, but some changes have been made. The AU$250K challenge, cancelled last time due to the low number of entries, is not on the menu - but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be short on high rollers. A AU$25K buy-in event starts on January 26th, the 50K starts two days later, on the 28th, while the biggest of them all, the AU$100,000 tournament launches on February 4th.

The series itself kicks off on January 17th at 6 PM with a AU$1 million GTD event with $1,250 buy-ins. Three more Day1’s are going to be played the following three days for that event.

The other much anticipated event besides the high rollers, the Main Event’s starts on the same day as the 50K event, January 28th, for stakes lower by order of magnitude: it’s “only” a AU$10,600 buy-in tournament. You can get in much cheaper though, through satellites, like last year’s champion did: local amateur Shurane Vijayaram paid AU$130 for his satellite ticket and managed to navigate himself all the way to Main Event victory, eventually pocketing AU$1.6 million.

He secured his first place with this impressive hero call on the river, holding nothing but a flimsy low pocket pair.

Vijayaram managed to top the field with such well-known poker players in it like Fedor Holz, who came in fifth, Poker Night in America regular and actress Jennifer Tilly, or 2015 EPT Barcelona High Roller winner, Italian pro Mustapha Kanit.

Seeing such recognizable names at an Aussie Millions table draw is not a rarity, for example the 250K challenge two years ago was won by none other than Phil Ivey - and the ten-time WSOP bracelet winner legend was recently spotted on the flight to Australia by Indian poker pro Nipun Java, so there’s a good chance Ivey’s returning this year!

This year’s Aussie Millions will close with a novelty event, starting on February 5th: two-player tag teams can compete in this AU$1,150 tournament, where the other player on the team has to take over the stack after every 30-minute blind level.

It came as a huge shock last year when the $250,000 Aussie Millions Challenge failed to materialize, and this year it has been left out of the festival’s schedule entirely.

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Results

In 2016 Steve O’Dwyer took down the massive event for almost AUS$1million, and the event has been won 3 times by Phil Ivey, but when last year’s AUS$100K buy-in High Roller attracted only 18 players, Melbourne’s Crown Casino cancelled the bigger event, citing the ‘lack of recreational players at the Super High Roller level’ as the biggest reason for the low turnout.

Maybe so, but the big-name pros were also notable by their absence, the likes of Ivey, Negreanu, Mercier and Dwan all missing from the supposedly premier flagship tournament in the Asian-Pacific calendar. In fact take up was so slow in the $100K event that they couldn’t fill a full table until late in the day with the event reduced from 3 days to 2, and then final table was held back 4 days to allow for the Main Event. No surprise, then, that the larger buy-in was cancelled.

The disappearance of PokerStars as the event’s main sponsor last year may have made playing tricky for some of the biggest names, Negreanu specifically, but as other Super High Rollers across the globe have had plenty of success, the Super High Roller Bowl for one attracting more wealthy players than they had room for, some missing out in a rather controversial ballot for the US$300K tournament.

Despite the failings, or lack of interest, at the very top of the buy-ins, last year’s Aussie Millions drew record crowds and organizers at the Crown expect this year (well, January 2018 to be precise) to be no different.

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Winner

“Crown’s Aussie Millions Poker Championship continues to absolutely stamp itself on the global ‘must-attend’ list for both recreational players and seasoned pros alike,' said Crown Melbourne Tournament Director Joel Williams, as the full schedule was released, adding that:

Aussie Millions 250k Challenge 2016 Winners

'Following on from record numbers across most events in 2017, 2018 looms as our biggest event to date.'