Poker news

34-year old Sydneysider Martin Rowe pocketed a massive AUD $1 million to become the newest PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Grand Final champion, outplaying 476 rivals over five days.

Cheered on in front of his by family, friends and a home crowd, Martin, a father of (almost) two from North Sydney commented directly following his win:

“I cannot believe I have won tonight. I felt on edge but not out of control the entire tournament and now to have the title I am just ecstatic, this will be life changing for my family.”

The Final Table began with nine players from an impressive starting field of 477, including the current 22-year old World Champion Peter Eastgate and Team PokerStars Pros Joe Hachem and Chris Moneymaker, competing for a prize pool of over $2.8 million.

With the final table made up of seven Aussies, it was fitting the title remained in Australia (a Pole and Canadian made up the remainder). Final table play lasted a gruelling nine and a half hours. In the last hand of the tournament Rowe raised 250,000 pre-flop. Gray went all-in and Martin called revealing Ac-Qh to Gray’s 9h-5h. The flop came down As-Qc-5s and the turn bought a 9s, but the river held a brick for Gray.

“It is fantastic to see an Australian champion in the APPT Grand Final for the second year in a row. Amongst a great international lineup it represents the calibre of poker in this country,” said APPT President Jeffrey Haas.

Other players who finished on the final table included the PokerStars Online Qualifier Timothy English from Australia, who qualified through PokerStars in a Last Chance Qualifier last Monday for $475 and took fifth place today to cash AUD$ 140,000.

This tournament ends the second season of the PokerStars.net APPT. Season 3 of APPT will be announced shortly.

The standings for the final nine of the Main Event are as follows:

Name, Country - Prize (AUD)
1. Martin Rowe, Australia - 1,000,000
2. Jason Gray, Australia - 476,000
3. Tony Basile, Canada - 266,000
4. Antonio Fazzolari, Australia - 182,000
5. Timothy English, Australia - 140,000
6. Frank Saffioti, Australia - 100,800
7. Daniel Kowalski, Poland/UK - 72,800
8. Hai Bo Chu, Australia - 53,200
9. Tom Rafferty, Australia - 39,200