The ANZPT made its 3^rd stop of the 2010 season at Sydney’s Star City Casino last week. 446 players descended on Sydney’s premier poker room at Star City Casino, all handing over the $2,200 buy-in main event entry. After 3 full days of play the final table was set and would resume the next day, leading the field was Michael O’Grady with a dominating chip lead with 2.3 million in chips with the second closest being Angelo Hanataj with 1.9 million with Ka Ming Fang rounding out the short stack with 288k.

Unfortunately for the organisers of the ANZPT and for Star City Casino the table was full of relative unknowns. Tri Nguyen was the first to be eliminated from the final table when his AQ couldn’t get there over Mike Ivin’s 55. Cale Maclean bled some chips and made some interesting calls before finally being eliminated when his AQ couldn’t hit the three outer against Angelo Hanataj’s AK.

Bernard Gabriel was the next to hit the rail when his AK could not hit against Angelo Hanataj’s 1010. This saw Hanataj slide into the chip lead over O’Grady. John Maklouf was the next casualty of the final table when he lost a crucial pot to Fang and then a few hands later Fang finished him off when Fang hit with QJ against Maklouf’s 1010.

Gold Coast builder Omer Silajdzija was the next to hit the rail at the hands of Fang, when his AJ was unable to improve against Fang’s pocket queens. Michael O’Grady never found traction on the final table and the one time chip leader was next to walk to the cage to collect his winnings when he decided to take a stand against Hanataj’s raise from the small blind. Holding 53 he was in bad shape against Hanataj’s A6, Ace high was good enough to take down the pot. O’Grady received just over $60k for his fourth place finish.

The play was now 3 handed and surprisingly the short stack coming into the day was still there, Fang however committed his stack with A3 on a AJJ board only to see Hanataj make the call with J10, Fang was eliminated in 3^rd place for a payday of just over $77k.

Play was now heads up between Mike Ivin and Angelo Hanataj. Hanataj held a 3 to 1 chip advantage. After applying hyper aggression Hanataj increased his lead to a 7 to 1 advantage only to see Ivin get smacked in the face with the deck to creep back and eventually take the chip lead when he doubled through with pocket kings. In a sea sawing battle Ivin extended his lead over Hanataj only to see Hanataj begin to fight back. With this fight becoming a long and stressful battle of patience and wits it was always going to come down to a cooler board to see Ivin make the sucker straight and Hanataj make the middle straight to send Ivin to the rail in second for a payday of $140k and crown Angelo Hanataj as ANZPT Sydney’s 2010 Champion pocketing just over $215k, we went into the day with a table of unknowns but after crowning Angelo Hanataj Champion we no longer have an unknown. Congratulations Angelo.