2008 Aussie Millions Poker Championship
21-Year-Old Russian Young Gun Alexander Kostritsyn Crowned 2008 Aussie Millions Champion Melbourne, Australia Sunday 20 January 2008
The new king of poker was crowned this evening when, Alexander 'The Great' Kostritsyn won the No-Limit Texas Holdem ‘Main Event’ at the 2008 Aussie Millions Poker Championship held at Melbourne’s Crown Casino. He had to beat one of the toughest NL Hold'em tournament players in the world in Erik Seidel for the victory. Seidel walked away in second place with a cool AUD$1 Million.
Kostritsyn took home AUD$1.65 Million, the largest prize ever awarded in a live poker tournament in the Southern Hemisphere. 21-year-old Alexander Kostritsyn from Moscow, Russia was the youngest player and only European at the final table at 21, this Muscovite turned his attention to playing poker full-time as soon as he turned 18. His best tournament cash was third in the 2007 Russian Summer Poker Tournament (worth $8,900). He bought in directly to the Aussie Millions ‘Main Event’. He outlasted a record field of 780 players who anted up the AUD$10,000 buy-in for the ‘Main Event’, creating an unprecedented prize pool of AUD$7.80 Million.
The Main Event at Melbourne’s Crown Casino was the culmination of the 16 individual events, which this year generated more than AUD$10 Million in total prize money.
‘We congratulate Alexander Kostritsyn on his tremendous accomplishment,’ said Peter Mim, Executive General Manager of Table Games at Crown. ‘He played superb poker over a prolonged period against a record field that included virtually every top professional and hundreds of talented amateurs from Australia and around the world.’
Finishing third and collecting AUD$700,000 was Michael 'Mick the Greek' Chrisanthopoulos. Hailing from ‘Hachem territory’ in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, the 26-year-old brought a massive chip stack to the Final Table. Michael has been playing poker for three years, and recently won a qualified via a Crown $120 Satellite to enter into the Aussie Millions ‘Main Event’.
The remaining players at the final table were:
4th place: Peter Ling- $500,000
5th place: Nino Marotta- $400,000
6th place: Antonio Casale- $300,000
7th place: Peter Mobbs- $225,000
Following on from the enormous ratings success of the US screening of the 2007 Aussie Millions Main Event, Crown and Fox Sports Net (FSN) will be partnering up for another year that will again see the Aussie Millions filmed for broadcast internationally from March 2007 as a 10 episode series with a reach of over 81 Million homes. A coup for Australian Poker, Crown’s collaboration with FSN further consolidates the prestige, recognition and credibility of the Aussie Millions, particularly in America, the home of Texas Holdem and a country that widely considers poker its national game.
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