Heading to Australia at any time is going to be a great trip but when you think that we’re in April and the British weather is still diabolical, you cannot blame people for wanting to head down under. Poker players get the chance to see sunnier climes and enjoy a number of brisk poker challenges in Australia for a large part of April. This is down to the fact that the inaugural World Series of Poker Asia-Pacific event will be taking place. Thankfully the name of the event has been shortened to the slightly handier WSOP-APAC!
A lot of British hopes are going to fall on Sam Trickett and he has some national or pan-European pride to play for. This is down to the fact that he is the Team Europe captain and he will be responsible for leading the team into battle against Team America (not the World Police unit made famous in film, a poker team) and Team Asia-Pacific. The other captains are Phil Ivey and Joe Hachem so Trickett is in great company. You can also expect Trickett to have an interest in the High Roller event and he could well come up against Dan Shak again. The two of them faced off at the end of the PartyPoker.com Premier League event when the American triumphed and he is supposed to be heading to Oz to take part. If Shak does travel, you just know the high roller event is calling him!
A massive festival of poker
There is sure to be a lot of poker excitement in Melbourne for this event which lasts for nearly two whole weeks. The first event takes place on Thursday the 4th of April and the event runs all the way through until the 15th of April. Every one of the WSOP-APAC poker events will be taking place in the Crown Casino in Melbourne. This is an outstanding venue and one that will be familiar to many poker players across the world. This is because it is a huge poker room, big enough to fit in more than 70 poker tables. This is one reason why the Aussie Millions poker event has been run so well in the past few years. It is this history and organisational skills that leaves you confident that the 5 WSOP bracelet events and the two non-bracelet events are being held in the perfect venue.
If your heart is set on winning a WSOP bracelet, the fact that the first bracelet event at the tournament starts on the 4th of April may come a little too soon for you. There is a buy-in of $1,100 and the event runs until the 8th of April. The other bracelet events that will take place at the WSOP-APAC event includes a $2,200 Mixed Event, a $1,650 PLO event, a $5,000 NLHE 6-Max and the final bracelet to play for is the $10,000 Main Event. The final figures are yet to be released but there is a lot of confident talk that there will be more than 500 players taking part in the Main Event.