The Newcastle Poker Championships are well and truly underway where several winners have been crowned in the most successful NPC tournament series held to date. In a coup for event organisers Aussie Hold’em Poker, five of the seven previous main event winners have been lured back to compete at this year’s championships.
The NPC will continue each day this week in the lead-up to the PokerMedia Main Event to be held on Saturday June 14. Action continues on Sunday June 15 with the High Roller Event which is sure to be an exciting affair as it’s already reached it’s cap of 32 players having sold out in two days earlier this year. A Chinese Open Faced Poker tournament will be also be played as a ‘Feature Event’ on Sunday June 15.
Here’s a summary of the results of events held so far, thanks to Aussie Hold’em Poker:
Event #1 – NLH Freeroll with Rebuys
Every year the Newcastle Poker Championships traditionally opens with a two-day event, the ‘Freeroll with Re-buys’, that begins on the Friday night of the June long weekend. Whilst the field was relatively small this year, the $10 re-buy action was enough to generate a prize pool of well over $3000!
The event was taken down by Nathan Bevan. Bevan is no stranger to winning big tournaments, as he won the Main Event of the 2013 Newcastle Poker Championships! This win gives him a record of sorts by winning the final event of NPCVII and the first event of NPCVIII.
Event #2 – NLH Bounty Event
The early 2pm start on Saturday June 7 saw a strong field of players hitting the felt for the bounty event. The record of 18 bounties set by Daniel Davies in 2012, however, was never under threat as the bounty claims were spread throughout the field. No player really dominated until the final table when Aaron Bolton (who took down his first big title in 2012 by winning the Pineapple event of NPCVI) claimed victory over Matt West.
Event #3 – NLH 2-Player Teams Event
The Teams Event is always a lot of fun and is generally quite a long event, so organisers moved it to a weekend with an earlier start time of 12noon. This proved to be popular with players as many got into the spirit of the event by not only choosing fun names but also dressing in their own themes. There were many hilarious moments, highlighted by popular local player Glenn Phillips, who turned up dressed as a Pokemon character that he named ‘Poker-chu’!
The serious business of winning the poker tournament was evident though when at the final table, Gold Coast poker professional Greg Davies was taken out by eventual winners ‘The Chicken Brothers’, David Bryde and Michael Evans. The victors eventually won after a fierce heads-up battle against ‘Kenji Crush’ Mitchell Farrell and Aaron Bolton who very nearly had two wins back to back!
Event #4 – NLH Deepstack
Not surprisingly, the first big field of the NPCVIII occurred with the staging of the ‘Deepstack Event’ where many of the big name local players came to play what would be one of the biggest prize pools so far. It would also prove to be a great warm-up event for the Main Event and High Roller events scheduled for the final weekend on June 14 & 15.
The tournament played out for nearly 11 hours with the winner, Josh Christie (pictured), triumphing over Stan Barker. No strangers to championship games, Josh was the winner of the Bounty event in NPCV in 2011 whilst Stan won not only the Heads Up event of NPCVI in 2012, but also went on to have a number of high place finishes that year to be crowned ‘Player of the Championships’.
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