This Week in Poker: Dan Smith Makes a Name for Himself at the Aussie Millions

Photo: PokerNews.com

Topics: Epic Poker League, This Week in Poker, Aussie Millions, Dan Smith, Phil Ivey [+]

Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia is this week’s magnet for big-money poker. Developing superstar Dan “the King” Smith has already toppled poker’s biggest names in the first High Roller event of the Aussie Millions, the A$100,000 Challenge. The week’s second storyline concerns the robust – but in some ways not so robust – attendance at the events, and attempts to auger the impact of Black Friday and the demise of former tournament sponsor Full Tilt Poker. Finally, the Aussie Millions Main Event, which started last weekend, was hijacked by three words: “Here comes Ivey.”

Dan Smith, High Roller King

The Aussie Millions started on January 12, but the heavy guns first came out in force for the A$100,000 Challenge, the event that launched Erik Seidel, Sam Trickett, and David Steicke in 2011. Twenty-two players entered, a combination of familiar names and guys with enough money and confidence that they should be familiar names. Dan Smith was one of the latter.

Smith, thanks to his victory, earned over A$1 million, and his GPI ranking vaulted this week to GPI#65. He’s been on a tear since late summer, finishing runner-up at the Parx Open Main Event, and finishing third and fourth in a pair of EPT/UKIPT London Open events. He entered the GPI on December 5, 2011, and shot from GPI#300 to GPI#155 last week. But tracking Smith through live tournaments is like judging the size of an iceberg from an airplane. He’s just twenty-two and in addition to winning an HPT event and chopping a Venetian Deep Stacks Main Event already, he’s well-known enough in online poker to have earned the nickname “the King,” won an FTOPS Main Event on Full Tilt, and contributes a blog and instructional materials to LeggoPoker.com, where his teaching rate is $350 per hour, though I’m guessing rates are rising.

Dan defeated Mikhail Smirnov heads-up. Joe Hachem finished third and Tony G finished fourth. Gus Hansen, the chip leader on Day 1, busted on the bubble.  It’s amazing that 22 players paid A$100,000, especially on the tail of so many of the same players paying a similar amount at the PCA. On the other hand, last year’s A$100,000 Challenge drew 38 players.

Did Black Friday Shrink Australia?

The 2011 Aussie Millions was arguably poker’s last bash before Black Friday: the A$100,000 Challenge, sponsorship by Full Tilt Poker, a 24-player A$25,000 invitational event, a huge-field Main Event that paid A$2 million first prize, and enough more poker money to pull together a last-minute A$250,000 Challenge that drew 20 players.

Once again, it’s a story of relevant information, but not from very close range. Directly or indirectly, Full Tilt was responsible for a lot of the money thrown around in 2011’s Super-Mega-Midas events. It was probably less responsible for Main Event turnout, which declined year-over-year much less, from 721 to 659. A review of several Aussie Millions events shows slightly lower or similar 2012 vs. 2011 totals:

                                               2012      2011
Opening A$1,000 NLHE               946        1,000
$A1,000 PLO                                      129        151
$A1,000 NLHE Shootout              150        158
$A1,000 NLHE 6-Handed            385         372     
$A1,000 NLHE Rebuy             92/331       86/255

Like last year’s World Series of Poker demonstrated, the best advertisement to overcome a loss of online-poker-related business is to post a sign reading “tournament today.” At the very highest buy-ins, that may not hold true, but poker’s best defense against adversity is, simply, that people want to play poker.

“Here Comes Ivey”

As Full Tilt’s money disappeared and its pros scattered among the four winds, perhaps no figure was more mysterious in 2011 than Phil Ivey. Long by deed and acclamation the best poker player in the world, the weirdness of Ivey’s absence from poker was exceeded only by the weirdness of his fleeting presence, suing Full Tilt at the start of the World Series of Poker, a move that can be explained best as “inexplicable” and a decisive move in a game that had no winners, only losers.

After busting from the A$100,000 Challenge, Phil played Day 1c of this year’s Main Event. He was aloof when he was a tournament regular and then he was gone: a sure formula to make him an even greater focus of attention. He built a big stack on Day 1c, and stayed near the chip lead through Day 2. We’ll see whether Ivey recaptures his tournament poker magic over the coming days, but one thing is clear: he has our attention, whether he wants it or not.