ANZPT Queenstown Gets Rolling

Lee Nelson

The Queenstown stop of the PokerStars Australia New Zealand Poker Tour began yesterday at SKYCITY casino.

Team PokerStars Pro Lee "Final Table" Nelson, APPT Sydney winner Aaron Benton and ANZPT Gold Coast champion Scott Kerr all came to play in Day 1a of the tournament, which is the only New Zealand-based event on the ANZPT.

A modest 38 players paid the NZD $2,500 entrance fee to play but after five levels of play the field had been cut down to 24.

Australian Michael Spilkin ran extremely well on Day 1a and finished as the overnight chip leader with 103,925 chips.

Day 1b of ANZPT begins today with Team PokerStars Pro Tony Hachem, Simon Watt and Jason Gray rumored to be among the field.

As part of an unusual schedule one of the previous flights for ANZPT Queenstown was actually played in Auckland over the weekend. On that day the field was narrowed down to 15 players, all of whom will be flying down to join Day 3 of ANZPT Queenstown.

ANZPT Queensland continues all this week with the final table scheduled for Sunday, July 24.