888PL News

Tue 20 Oct - 2015 Star Showdown Champion – Rino Matarese

A HUGE congratulations to Rino Matarese who has taken out the 2015 Star Showdown, the exclusive Star tournament for 888PL, APL and Pub Poker Players only.  Rino played a fantastic event and he knew that the win was coming his way, he was short stacked at several times throughout the tournament and his aggressive play paid off hugely in the end picking up over $50,000 in Cash and Prizes. This included $46,100 in cash, a $2,000 Summer Series Set, a $600 Showdown Seat for 2016 and a $2,200 white gold and diamond Champions ring. Goran Pavlovic was runner up with a massive $25,000 in cash and prizes.

The four day event started on the Thursday Evening for Day 1, Flight A.  With 190 888PL, APL and Pub Poker players walking into the Star Casino to play off for the $50,000 1^st prize, the Star Poker Room was buzzing with excitement.  With 30 minute blinds in Day 1 the play went for 14 levels and ended up thinning the 190 starting players to 69 players ready to start on Day 2.  Friday we had the larger flight of 240 players to take the felt; the first out on each flight 1 was within 10 minutes of the day; Pocket Kings ended up all in against Pocket Aces, in both hands the Aces were eliminated after a King on the flop.  Flight 1b ended with 112 players heading through to day two.

Day Two, Saturday was the day to survive, knowing we would hit the cash by the end of the day but with blinds starting at 1,200/2,400 200 Ante for 40 minute levels the blinds let everyone have their chance at running deep.  The top 43 players would make at least $1,000 with 45^th, Joe G from VIC winning an Xbox for being the second last out on day 2 and Daniel C from Illawarra Nth coming in 44^th to take the $600 Showdown seat for 2016.  With that we were down to 43 Players; Day Two had gone for an extra 30 minutes than planned to ensure we hit the Cash!  With a round of applause, a few High Fives and of course the messages to those at home 43 would return for Day Three, everyone making at least $1,000 for their weekends work with the hope of taking out the big prize!

Sunday morning the remaining 43 players made their way to their seats; Play kicked off at 12.15 pm with first out happening just minutes after the start of play.  Although the blinds were still 10,000/20,000 2,000 ante; the big blind was still less than the starting stack of 30,000 in chips, the players left in knew that they had to take the $50,000 prize and not just wait for it to happen.  Over the next 3 hours of play we lost the 34 players needed to hit the final table!  With All-ins coming from everywhere it was an exciting day to watch!  We were at the final table!  For all the final table action please head to https://www.facebook.com/LiveReporting

Final Table hit at about 3.30pm and we went to go on to have our winner at 8.30pm at night.  This 5 hour final table was only made possible by the fantastic blind structure at this event which meant the final table had more than enough time to play for the huge $153,000 in Cash and Prizes on the final table.

Don’t forget to check out https://www.facebook.com/LiveReporting for all the excitement of our Major Events!