Sunday February 01,2015 : LIVE TOURNEY VICTORY FOR YONG AT LAST
Veteran poker pro takes down the A$100,000 buy-in Aussie Millions Challenge.
High stakes professional player Richard Yong has made millions in live tournaments, yet strangely has never actually finished in first place until this weekend, when he changed all that with a major win in the A$100,000 buy-in Aussie Millions Challenge, boosting his bank balance with a useful A$1.87 million – his biggest single score yet.
The event attracted a field of 70 players to the Exhibition Hall at Crown Melbourne and included local hero Alex Trevallion, who has been enjoying an outstanding tournament after winning the A$25,000 buy-in Challenge and finishing 33rd in the Main Event
Unfortunately, in this hard-fought competition he made the final table but was eliminated at eighth for a still-impressive A$310,000.
The tough final table facing Yong comprised Trevallion, Ole Schemion, Scott Seiver, Justin Bonomo, Jason Mo, Erik Seidel and Dani Stern, with Schemion holding a substantial chip lead.
When Yong eliminated Scott Seiver in third place for a million dollars, he set the heads up with a more than 2 to 1 advantage in chips over Ole Schemion, a 22-year-old German ace with a truly impressive record of reaching the heads up stage in 16 major tournaments, and emerging victorious in 11 of them.
It was the start of a double up-rich feast of exciting professional poker that had the spectators totally absorbed as the two men fought it out into the 23rd level of the game with the blinds at 50,000/100,000. There, Yong finally managed to gain the upper hand and eliminate a very worthy opponent to claim his first major tournament win.
Schemion was well-compensated for his impressive fightback, collecting the runner up's A$1,350,000 as top names in international poker left the rail to congratulate a beaming Yong.
Other final table pay-outs included:
Justin Bonomo A$800,000
Jason Mo A$630,000
Erik Seidel A$500,000
Dani Stern A$400,000
Alex Trevallion A$310,000