Burns And Addamo Win Aussie Millions High Rollers

It is no surprise that Aussie poker players are winning many of the events at the 2020 Aussie Millions Poker Championship at Crown Casino in Melbourne. But some of the winners not only show that poker is a game of skill but that two names – Kahle Burns and Michael Addamo – are dominating the high-stakes poker tournament scene lately.

Crown Casino regular Vincent “Wonky” Wan also took his place in poker history by winning the Aussie Millions Main Event.

Big Numbers at Aussie Millions

One of the biggest live poker tournament series of the year is the Aussie Millions, and it attracts players from around the globe. Of course, Australian players tend to dominate because the Crown Casino in Melbourne is their own turf.

This year’s series started on January 4 and finished today, January 24. There was a solid turnout for the series as a whole, and the $10K buy-in Main Event came close to beating its own record number of entries set in 2019.

• 2020 Aussie Millions Main Event entries = 820
• 2019 entries = 822
• 2018 entries = 800
• 2017 entries = 725
• 2016 entries = 732
• 2015 entries = 648
• 2014 entries = 668
• 2013 entries = 629
• 2012 entries = 659
• 2011 entries = 721
• 2010 entries = 746
• 2009 entries = 681
• 2008 entries = 780
• 2007 entries = 747

It should be noted that the earlier editions of the Main Event drew all individual players, as there were no reentries at that time. The big numbers came from the poker boom and the aftereffects of Aussie Joe Hachem winning the WSOP Main Event in 2005. The past few years of high numbers include reentries.

List of 2020 Aussie Millions Winners

To highlight the Australian players in the following list of winners, those lines appear in bold. All amounts are in Australian dollars.

• Event 1: $1,150 NLHE (1,665 entries, $1,706,625 prize pool) Jo Snell won $341,325
• Event 2: $2,500 HORSE (42 entries, $94,500 prize) Dzmitry Urbanovich won $28,755
• Event 3: $1,150 PLO (349 entries, $357,725 prize) Matthew Edwards won $83,185
• Event 4: $1,150 NLHE Mix Max (342 entries, $350,550 prize) Freek Scholten won $86,575
• Event 5: $1,150 NLHE 6-Max (560 entries, $574,000 prize) Pasquale Braco won $128,000
• Event 6: $2,500 PLO (170 entries, $382,500 prize) Sherif Derias won $97,525
• Event 7: $1,500 NLHE Deep Freeze (646 entries, $839,800 prize) Natalia Rozova won $142,244
• Event 8: $2,500 NLHE 6-Max Shot Clock (258 entries, $580,500 prize) Toby Lewis won $148,030
• Event 9: $1,150 NLHE Accumulator (867 entries, $888,675 prize) Michael O’Grady won $188,860
• Event 10: $2,500 8-Game Mix (70 entries, $157,500 prize) Jussi Nevanlinna won $51,975
• Event 11: $25K PLO (59 entries, $1,416,000 prize) Jorryt van Hoof won $467,280
• Event 12: $25K NLHE Challenge (169 entries, $4,056,000 prize) Farid Jattin won $983,646
• Event 13: $2K NLHE Bounty (403 entries, $725,400 prize) Richard Kellett won $725,400
• Event 14: $10,600 NLHE Main Event (820 entries, $8.2M prize) Vincent Wan won $1,318,000
• Event 15: $50K NLHE Challenge (82 entries, $3,977,000 prize) Michael Addamo won $1,073,790
• Event 16: $1,150 NLHE Terminator (465 entries, $476,625 prize) Jason Hardie won $56,755
• Event 17: $1,150 NLHE Hyper Turbo (295 entries, $302,375 prize) Michael Guzzardi won $62,930
• Event 18: $1,150 PLO Hi/Lo (133 entries, $136,325 prize) Daniel Mayoh won $35,445
• Event 19: $2,500 NLHE (299 entries, $672,750 prize) Ari Engel won $141,775
• Event 20: $1,150 NLHE TOC (283 entries, $290,075 prize) Yuan Li won $68,915
• Event 21: $5K NLHE 6-Max (197 entries, $925,900 prize) Bernard Larabi won $240,725
• Event 22: $1,150 NLHE Turbo Shot Clock (296 entries, $303,400 prize) Hamish Crawshaw won $72,070
• Event 23: $100K NLHE Challenge (54 entries, $5,292,000 prize) Kahle Burns won $1,746,360

Burns Starts 2020 with Momentum

Much has been written about Kahle Burns, but his latest win at the Aussie Millions highlights what has been a whirlwind nine months. His poker career goes back much further than May 2019, but that is when his current roll began.

Burns started his current streak with a win at the 2019 Crown Poker Championship last year, then went on to take second in the WSOP $10K NLHE 6-Handed Championship, make two final tables at the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series and then another two at the EPT Barcelona. He won two WSOP bracelets at WSOP Europe in Rozvadov, won one and final tabled two other Poker Masters events in Las Vegas, final tabled two PartyPoker MILLIONS High Roller events in the Bahamas, and one at EPT Prague.

Those finishes put Burns into the top spot in the GPI national poker rankings for Australia in 2019.

He took that momentum right into 2020. He went to the PartyPoker MILLOINS UK in Nottingham in the first week of the new year, where he took second in the $10K High Roller and won the $25K Super High Roller. Back in Australia, he then took down the $100K Challenge at the Aussie Millions.

Less than one month into 2020, Burns has earned $1,726,925, putting his lifetime live tournament total at $9,552,161. And he is now the second player on the all-time money list for Australia, a few million behind Joe Hachem.

Addamo Not Far Behind

After landing in the live tournament poker scene in 2013, Michael Addamo worked his way up to earning more than $145K in 2015 and more than $388K in 2016. He topped $530K in 2017 and then soared much higher. By 2018, he was playing higher buy-in tournaments and winning much more, as he shows more than $2.8 million in winnings that year and more than $2.2 million in 2019.

Addamo is no stranger to the High Roller tournaments and won two of them in 2019, both Aria Summer High Roller events in Las Vegas. He had deep runs in others, as well as the EPT Monte Carlo High Roller, WSOP $50K High Roller, PartyPoker MILLIONS High Roller, and yet another at EPT Barcelona.

Starting 2020 with a win in the $50K Challenge at the Aussie Millions starts what could be yet another impressive year. He is already at more than $1 million in A$ earnings for the year. With nearly $7 million in lifetime earnings, he is third on the Aussie all-time money list.

Aussie Millions Main Event Winner Wan

The previously-mentioned Aussie Millions $10K buy-in Main Event finished today, January 24. Well-known poker pro Erik Seidel was the star of the final table when it began. He had finished second in the 2008 Aussie Millions Main Event and wanted to take it down.

It was not meant to be. Seidel finished fifth. But Vincent Wan moved forward, already having been guaranteed more money than he had ever won in a live poker tournament. He and the other two finalists in the Aussie Millions Main Event agreed on a payout agreement and then played on for the trophy. Wan won it.

His nickname at Crown Casino in Melbourne is Wonky, and he is known mostly for having won two six-figure Royal Flush jackpots in the poker room. Wan’s win at the Aussie Millions meant an Aussie won the tournament, as he calls Melbourne home. But Wan is also a native of Vietnam, and he set a record for the largest single tournament win by a Vietnamese player in poker history.

After the victory, Wan was emotional and told reporters, “I can’t believe my luck. Thank you to all the other players. Basically, it’s ten years of my life just grinding and working and trying to get here. I can’t believe I did it.”