In the next few hours, we'll have a winner declared in the main event of Crown's Aussie Millions Poker Championship. As always, there's a bit of a letdown, just as the prize payout curve is turning toward the ceiling. Many people have left town, on their way home, to the next tournament, or (in Tom Dwan's case) "The Gold Coast - one of the beaches I think. We'll just have to see." The cash games are still rocking hard - I was in a $2-4 PLO game that built a $2,000 four-way pot. Preflop. And then the big gambler at the table moved to the $25-$25-$50 PLO game. But soon the poker room here at the Crown Casino will settle back down to its normal level of buzz. The staff - Jonno, Nicolle, Penny, Natasha, and all the other wonderful folks - will get to go home at a sane hour.

But of course, the party never ends. Somewhere in the world, there's another big buyin tournament series (or two) going on. In the case of Cake Poker, you can now win a seat to the Irish Open in Dublin. Myself and/or other members of the Cake staff will be there to host and make sure you have an extraordinary time. Satellites are already running, so get your spot on Team Cake today. And of course, before we all know it, it will be time to have WSOP satellites, and then, blink, it's Aussie Millions 2011.

I'll try to report something useful from the party, but for now let's roll the credits and call it a wrap.

First, a tip of the hat to our host city, Melbourne. As I pointed out ten days ago, this is a great place for a visit. Putting a first-class poker tournament in the middle of it is icing on the proverbial cake.

Wicked Chops, eat your heart out

I didn't stage this photo. I did get looked a bit askance by the young ladies, but I merely waved my media pass in their general direction and moved on.

They've got kids out performing gymnastic feats on the building features, just for the sheer joy of doing it on a hot Saturday morning...

Take-off

Flight

Landing

The kid stopped, Spiderman-like, right against the wall, fingertips clinging to the top. Then he bounded down and ran over to me to see if I got the pictures. "Man, SLRs are tight!" he proclaimed. Indeed, they are.

I didn't take pictures of the staff here at the Crown, but both the publicity/marketing people and the poker room staff have been extraordinarily gracious and helpful in every respect. I hope I get to come back sometime and see them again.

But the reason I was here was the people who qualified for the event - people we're proud to call members of Team Cake. Here they are gathered in my hotel room for a pre-tournament meet-and-greet.

The reason we do what we do

Left to right, that's vupp1, 1$ickDisea$e, i4815162342, claytoncomic, ILIKEPARROTS, and On2theNext1. I had the opportunity to bump into various of them at times throughout the week and was always delighted to see them. They were great fun and I hope they enjoyed the trip as much as I did. I would be proud to bring back any of them as members of the Team at another event.

Not pictured here is ringboy69, who went the deepest of the bunch. He came in 31st for $30K. When I talked to him, he was disappointed (as will happen), but $30,000 (and a couple of weeks) will heal a lot of wounds. Here is a final picture of ringboy69. Note the guy across the table from him...

Our guy outlasted their guy, by some significant margin

I can't wait for the next one, wherever it is.

It seems that Sorrel Mizzi has been the chip leader in Crown's Aussie Millions Poker Championship main event for the last two days. They're down to four and he still has the chip lead. It's not so overwhelming that anything is guaranteed, but whatever, this has been an astonishing performance by my Canadian friend. This image gives you a sense of Sorrel's presence in the tournament...

It's like he can see every move we're making

Sorrel has had a sometimes fractious relationship with the major poker sites. Here's what I know for sure: he is unfailingly polite and gracious and doesn't take himself to seriously. I will admit right here that I'm rooting hard for him.

When you hang out with Annette Obrestad, you discover that she's charming, fun, bubbly, and wonderful company. So before she got into play at Crown's Aussie Millions Poker Championship, we got an image like this:

Annette Obrestad, the charmer

Then she threw her gum wrapper at me for taking too many pictures of her. She can be my niece any time she wishes.

A few minutes later, she got into a pot with (as we'd learn later) pocket jacks. I didn't see the preflop action, but I'm prepared to bet my left arm that there was at least one raise involved. Here she is when some of her chips are in the middle of the table...

Annette Obrestad, the predator

Absolutely silent. Even her motions are slow and methodical, almost as if she's a robot being controlled by an external computer. It's fascinating to watch. The flop came J-T-T and a big pot got built. On the river she bet some relatively large amount. Her opponent put out four 5K chips, apparently thinking it was a call. But it was more than twice her bet. "Is that a raise?" she asked. "Yes," said the dealer. She thought briefly (there were higher cards than her jack on the board and maybe even a straight flush). "I call." "I didn't mean to raise," sighed the opponent, showing that he had turned the ace-high straight.

Annette said she felt bad about taking those chips, but (as any other poker player would) she took them anyway. And for a brief moment, Annette the Charmer and Annette the Predator merged into a single being:

Annette the Chameleon

When you go to a poker tournament, you hope for a table full of clueless fish. Donkeys, tourists, whatever you want to call them. Presumably if you've put up $10,000 or won a satellite of some sort, you'd prefer to get good value for your money. So I wonder what these guys are thinking:

A Phil Ivey / Tom Dwan sandwich

Yes, that's the unmistakable haircut of Tom "Durrr" Dwan on the right-hand edge of the picture. And both of the unnamed players in this image are old enough to remember Humphrey Bogart's classic line when Lauren Bacall walks into his casino: "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." Or, "There are three starting days, 20-30 tables every day. And I end up squeezed between two of the toughest poker players on the planet."

On the other hand, maybe they're secretly delighted. After all, every story they tell at the local poker game will now start out, "So, there I was, sitting between Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan..." Like the credit card commercial points out, some things are priceless. For these guys' sake, I hope they get $10K worth of memories.

First, we had two women dressed sort of like Carmen Miranda parading around. After that, we had a very loud recording of the AC%DC classic, "It's a Long Way to the Top (if You Wanna Rock 'n Roll)". At least, that's what I thought until I stepped out of the media room. It was a live band, including a guitarist dressed in the British schoolboy uniform that Angus Young made famous. They rocked hard - pity that we only got to hear the one song.

At 12:45, only about 15 minutes past schedule, the cards went into the air. Cake qualifier 1$ickDi$ea$e had already built a nice stack when I got to him:

1$ickDi$ea$e contemplates his next move

This next image is of two players you probably won't recognize; I certainly didn't. But this scene sums up the tension of a poker tournament. These two guys had built a big pot on a board of A-7-7--Q--9. No flush possible. On the river, the guy in the Portland jersey put in the rest of his chips.

Does he have it, or doesn't he?

This is what poker tournaments come down to. When the cards go on their backs and the dealer runs out the board, the interesting part of poker is over. Now it's just up to a randomly shuffled deck of cards. It's no more fascinating than watching a roulette wheel spin or a pair of dice bounce across a felt. But this moment - this is the essence of poker. The jersey guy's statement is clear: "I have a very big hand - one so good I'm prepared to risk my participation in the Aussie Millions on it." But the beauty, the core of poker: he may be lying. The gray-hoodied opponent was stumped. He looked at his cards, looked at the bettor, and sighed. He thought, he looked at Jersey-guy again. He looked up at the ceiling. This was not Hollywooding - he had a tough decision to make. I thought he probably had trip sevens, but with a weak kicker. In the meantime, Jersey-guy looked around, sipped his water. Who know what was going through his mind? "Call. Please call." Or "If he calls, I'm having an early dinner. Then I'm going home to kick the dog."

Finally Gray-hoodie sighed and shoved his cards toward the dealer. I thought I even detected some extra "oomph" in the shove: "Take these away before I change my mind and make a bad call." This wasn't a moment for the TV cameras but as far as I was concerned it is moments such as these that fill poker tournaments. During those seconds, both of the players were unquestionably, inarguably alive.

Last night, the Crown Casino turned an upstairs function room into a TV studio and held a $100K buy-in tournament. This gave all the photographers and celebrity seekers a dynamite opportunity to see all of their heroes in one location. Tony G arrived on a bicycle, pedaled by a P*rty P*ker rent-a-babe. The other players, to my knowledge, walked in under their own power.

Some of these guys are so legendary that their "auras" remain even after they've left the room. Here's the proof:

Erick Lindgren knows Barry Greenstein left the room...

But can't shake the sense that he's still there...

Then there's the conversation that takes place among people who have the world by the tail. The thing that they most worry about is who has the best MP3 collection on his iPod...

I have the complete collection of Safri Duo - do you not?

Of course, the alternate title there is "OMG - do you realize how much rake Full Tilt has made since we sat down?" John Juanda, in the meantime, is reaching the top level on his Soduko app.

But even among the high-rollers, there is still a pecking order. Before the event started, a photographer asked Chris Ferguson if he could take his picture. Chris, sitting next to Doyle's Room pro Dani "Ansky" Stern, said "Sure." No, no - the photographer wanted Chris's picture with a couple of beautiful young women. "Even better..." commented Ferguson, bouncing up from his seat.

Dani Stern will get his chance. But later.

Neither Ferguson nor Stern made it to the final table - the action was fast and furious because they had to be out of the room that evening. Turns out there was a bar mitzvah in that room the next day.

I'm here in Melbourne, Australia (after an obscenely long couple of plane flights) for Crown's Aussie Millions Poker Championship, for which ten Cake players have qualified via our satellites. Since I'd never been to Melbourne, I thought it was important that we go over some of the key aspects of this town and make sure it was conducive to good times for poker players. So...

All-night convenience store with ATM? Check

Beautiful city skyline? Check

This, by the way, is the view from my hotel room at the Crown Tower, looking across the Yarra River into city centre Melbourne.

Plenty of fish? Check

The Melbourne Aquarium is a five-minute walk from the Crown Casino/Hotel complex where the Aussie Millions is being held.

Gelato? Check

Uncensored Broadband Internet? Check

Soulful sax-playing busker entertaining crowds near Crown Hotel/Casino? Check

Interesting restaurant choices nearby? Check

Sitting inside a Greek restaurant (chicken souvlaki, yum) I took this picture of Hawaiian, Vietnamese, and Korean restaurants sitting right next to each other. You won't have difficulty finding delicious and exotic food in this town.

So, we conclude that Melbourne is in every respect a dynamite place to hold a poker tournament. Of course, no town is without its downsides. Yes, there are plenty of fish, but check this out:

Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan ain't the only sharks in this town

These are actually extremely life-like shark fins bobbing immediately outside the Melbourne Aquarium. Don't you love the Aussie sense of humor?

Also, go back up and check out the picture of the sax player. Note the yellow circle. That's right folks - it's a bagpipe. And frighteningly enough, I had another bagpipe encounter today (more about that later). I guess even a Southern Hemisphere paradise is not without a cloud or two.

Australia, land of friendly wildlife and the Aussie Millions.

The 2010 Aussie Millions tournament series kicks off today with a $1,100 AUD buy-in, No Limit Hold' em event. Actually, given the mysteries of the international date line, it might be tomorrow that it kicks off. Or, maybe it was yesterday. Regardless, for the next two weeks, the biggest action in the poker world will be happening Down Under. And actually it did start today, Australia time, which means that Day 1a of the $1,100 buy-in event is in the books. Tony Hachem, not to be confused with his brother Joe, currently sits in 2nd place, behind leader Xen Xenofontos.

The $10,000 Main Event, which happens a bit later this month, tends to attract some of the biggest names in the game. Gus Hansen won back in 2007, taking home $1.5 million for his troubles, while Erik Seidel was the runner-up in 2008. This year, projections are that the first place winner will take home upwards of $2 million. That's Australian dollars, mind you, but the winner likely won't complain.

So if you happen to find yourself in Melbourne in the next couple weeks, drop by the Crown Casino poker room to check out the action. Not only will it be exciting but it will also keep you inside, safely hidden from the country's many deadly forms of wildlife, like tiger snakes, redback spiders, death adders and Russell Crowe.