[ Posted December 9th, 2008 ] by contract

After 4 days of action, 476 players being eliminated, nine hours of final table play and an ever more gruelling 2 and half hours of heads up play – Sydney’s Star City Casino has crowned the 2008 APPT Grand Final Winner, Martin Rowe!

Rowe, who (by day) is a financial analyst only started playing poker 3 years ago at his local pub. "Three years ago a pub near me started up a normal league, and I started playing in that because I was interested in the game, and how the odds came together.” Rowe said.

Since then he’s refined his skills at tournament poker at Star City Casino and as he said, well how about the odds coming together?!

After recently starting his own business, Rowe said he may take a break from working and take up a stint at playing poker professionally. I guess a cool million aussie bucks is a good start to his bankroll.

The final table seat positions and chip counts came down like this:

Seat 1: Martin Rowe – 995,000
Seat 2: Jason Gray – 1,188,000
Seat 3: Tony Basile – 863,000
Seat 4: Timothy English – 945,000
Seat 5: Daniel Kowalski – 959,000
Seat 6: Frank Saffioti – 790,000
Seat 7: Tom Rafferty – 1,101,000
Seat 8: Antonio Fazzolari – 1,775,000
Seat 9: Hai Bo Chu – 781,000

With everyone reasonably stacked in chips, barely 300-400k separated most of the field. It was really anyones game going into the final table. Many out there were saying it was a given - Jason Gray would take it down. He did live up to the talk, but fell short by one. In a very couragous effort, Gray battled well. He went into heads up play with a huge 8-1 deficit, getting as close as 5-4, but just couldn’t build on the momentum. It was a credit to Rowe, who recognised Grays play and shifted gears to reverse the momentum.

Heads up almost lasted 5 mins when Rowe had Gray almost eliminated, it was only after a Gray outdraw that he survived and now after 2 and half hours we have the next all in and the final hand…

Here’s how the final hand played out:

Blinds – 50k / 100k

Gray limps into the pot from the button, calling the extra 50k.

Rowe makes a standard raise to 250k.

Gray then pushes over the top, all-in and puts his tournament life on the line

Almost immediately, Rowe makes the call

Gray shows 
Rowe shows

Rowe had Gray well covered, but Gray’s 2 cards were both very live.

The flop brought more action when it came . Giving Rowe 2 pair and Gray flopping a pair.

When the  turned, it was looking like destiny could play out again. Gray needed a 5 or 9 to double up and stay in the hunt.

The dealer then dealt the final card, the river coming down  and Rowe had won the 2008 Sydney APPT Grand Final and 1millions bucks Aussie money!

Qualify for the next APPT event atPokerStars

Here’s the final payouts:

For the extended payoutsclick here

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