Thursday, 28th March 2024 14:29
Home / Uncategorized / ANZPT6 Melbourne Day 1b: The life of Jesse

It’s official. We’ve topped the 500 player mark and reached the elusive million dollar prize pool! The 2014 ANZPT Melbourne Main Event is officially the largest ANZPT event in history, and registration is not even closed yet!

It’s a tremendous result for Crown and the ANZPT team who have put a lot of time into satelliting online qualifiers on PokerStars over the past five months.

One of those PokerStars qualifiers is a man that we’ve seen many times on the ANZPT – Jesse “On The Mac” McKenzie.

jesse_mckenzie_anzpt6_melbourne.jpg

McKenzie has a strong record on the ANZPT. He finished in second place at the ANZPT Adelaide in 2011 and ended third in the ANZ Player of the Year race in the same season. He’s also renowned as being one of the country’s most prolific online satellite winners, and the lure of a million dollar prize pool was too much to resist.

So how many ANZPT Melbourne satellites did “On The Mac” win exactly?

“Let’s just say that I won a bunch,” laughed a coy McKenzie.

One would think that his repeated success in qualifiers would be to the detriment of the tournament’s overall numbers, but McKenzie has a different viewpoint.

“Some of those satellites might not even get up if it wasn’t for us,” McKenzie explained. “Usually four of us would sit in and start them up and then a bunch of people would sit once it got going.”

McKenzie’s theory might have some merit, considering that there were a record number of online satellite winners for this event.

A whole bunch of $T in the kitty would satisfy most of us, but McKenzie realised the potential prizes on offer here in Melbourne and wanted an even bigger slice of the pie. So he started to buy and swap pieces of action in the Main Event.

“I have pieces of fifteen different people, ranging from three to 70 percent, but a total of 309% overall, plus 75% of myself,” explained McKenzie as he produced his iPhone which listed all his action. We don’t want to name names, but let’s just say that McKenzie’s stable had a pretty solid day yesterday.

And his action doesn’t end there.

McKenzie also teed up a friendly $100 last longer with Tony Tartaglia well before the event started, and after late registering today, McKenzie took his seat – Table 8, Seat 8 – right next to his old friend “Tony Unique”.

“Bullshit! You’re sitting here?!? Bullshit!” greeted Tartaglia as the two exchanged plenty of friendly banter and got down to business.

jesse_tony_anzpt6_melbourne.jpg

There’s a million bucks in the prize pool and McKenzie has over a dozen horses in this field, yet it seems the $100 last longer might be the most important prize of them all!

Heath “TassieDevil” Chick is a Freelance Contributor for the PokerStars Blog.

Study Poker with Pokerstars Learn, practice with the PokerStars app