SKYCITY Festival of Poker's Final 32 Take To The Tables

At 12:15 yesterday the 32 remaining players in the 2009 SKYCITY NZPT Festival of Poker took their seats to play for the title of SKYCITY Festival of Poker Champion.

Yesterday’s Day 2 was full of knock-outs from, international players as well as local talents. 88 players were left chip-less and out of the tournament leaving the final 32 through to Day 3.

International players; Celina Lin from Macau, Emad Tahtouh, Tony Hachem and Grant Levy from Australia all succumbed to the aggressive playing from some of Australasia’s best players and were knocked out of the tournament.

Notable local losses included both Brotha D from Dawn Raid Entertainment, Joe Lonie from New Zealand’s iconic band Supergroove and Dan Sing who placed 4th in the 2008 SKYCITY Festival of Poker.

Both Brotha D and Lonie won their tickets into the NZPT Main Event through this year’s SKYCITY Celebrity Invitational poker tournament which was held on 13 October.

Day 3 will begin with the small blind at $3,000 and big blind at $6,000 with a $500 ante, which will continue to rise every hour until only the final nine players are left.

All 32 players who made it through to today’s Day 3 will walk away with cash prizes with the minimum being $5,523.00 NZD.

The chip leader going into today’s round is Jason Brown from New Zealand with $632,000 in chips.