At 12:30pm Melbourne time on Wednesday 6 May 2026, I plan to take my seat in the Aussie Millions Main Event at the Crown Poker Room at Crown Casino Melbourne. Barring any surprises, the traditional call of “Shuffle up and deal” will follow shortly thereafter. As poker players say, the cards will be “in the air.”
Like every hand of Texas Hold’em, I’ll receive two hole cards. After a quick look while shielding them from view, I’ll make my first decision: fold, call or raise. And with that, my 2026 Aussie Millions Main Event adventure will begin.
The tournament will take place over five days, with three day 1 flights (days 1A, 1B and 1C on May 4, 5 and 6 respectively) followed by days 2, 3 and 4 on May 7, 8 and 9 respectively, and then, for the lucky last seven players remaining alive in the tournament, the final table commences at 2:30pm on the fifth and final day, Sunday May 10.
It strikes me that there is now a whole generation of gaming industry professionals across Asia-Pacific with relatively little exposure to tournament poker. So I’ll use this rare return to the felt to offer a first-person view of how these events work and what it’s like to play one.
For context, I was once a professional blackjack player, although I haven’t played a hand in anger for more than 20 years. After moving to the industry side of the table, I spent roughly a decade playing high-stakes tournament poker, including most stops on the Asia-Pacific Poker Tour and Asian Poker Tour from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s. I also played several Aussie Millions in Melbourne and multiple Main Events at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas.
I was lucky enough to cash in the WSOP main in 2014, and had a nice US$269,231 payday in 2008 when I finished second in an APPT High Rollers event.
Poker tournaments and the Main Event
Major tournaments are typically part of broader festival series offering multiple poker formats, satellites and cash games. But the focus is always the Main Event: simply “the main” to players.
The 2026 Aussie Millions runs from 24 April to 10 May, with 17 official events alongside satellites and cash games. The Main Event buy-in is AU$10,600 (US$7,574), of which AU$10,000 goes to the prize pool.
The format is of course no-limit Texas Hold’em: the most prestigious variant of the game, sometimes referred to as the “Cadillac of poker.”
No-limit Texas Hold’em
A full explanation is beyond the scope of this article, but here’s a brief explanation.
Each player receives two privately-held cards (“hole cards”), while five community cards are dealt face-up in the middle of the table in stages: the flop (three cards), turn (one card) and river (one card). These five community cards are collectively known as “the board.”
There are four betting rounds: pre-flop, on the flop, on the turn and on the river. A player wins either by being the last remaining participant in the hand (because everyone else folded) or by holding at showdown the best five-card combination of their seven available cards.
If you want to go deeper, Google it. You can easily disappear down that rabbit hole for anything from minutes to decades.
Entries and prize pool
Field size is a key variable in any poker tournament, as it drives both tournament duration and the size of the prize pool.
The last Aussie Millions Main Event in 2020 drew 820 entries. From 2015 to 2019, fields ranged from 638 to 822. After a six-year hiatus, a reasonable expectation for 2026 is 500 to 700 players. Let’s assume 600 for our purposes.
At that level, the prize pool would be AU$6 million (US$4.29 million), implying a first prize of approximately AU$750,000 (US$536,000). Typically, 10% to 15% of the field cashes, with the rest losing their entire buy-in.
What does it take to win?
A deep run in a major tournament is mentally and emotionally demanding: greed, fear, exhilaration, frustration and exhaustion all come into play.
At its core, poker requires both analytical and psychological skills. Players must constantly calculate pot odds, probabilities and stack dynamics, while also reading opponents. Are they strong? Weak? Acting? What do they have? What do they think I have? What do they think I think they have? And so on.
Discipline is critical. A single lapse, in the form of a hasty decision or emotional reaction caused by a sudden rush of blood to the head, can undo hours or even days of strong play. And those days routinely stretch to 12 hours or more.
Finally, there is luck. Don’t get me wrong — over the long run skill definitely prevails — but to win any given single poker tournament, you also need luck: strong hands at the right moments, and boards that cooperate.
Poker is a game of both skill and luck. This cannot be avoided.
How is the winner determined?
I’ve been asked more than once in the past week to explain the basic mechanics, so here goes.
All players begin with a starting stack. For the Aussie Millions main it is 60,000 tournament chips. These have no cash value and exist purely to facilitate play.
The tournament progresses through timed levels, 90 minutes in this case, with escalating blinds and antes, collectively known as the “structure”:
AUSSIE MILLIONS MAIN EVENT STRUCTURE
| Level | Small Blind | Big Blind | Big Blind Ante |
| 1 | 100 | 200 | 200 |
| 2 | 200 | 300 | 300 |
| 3 | 200 | 400 | 400 |
| 4 | 300 | 500 | 500 |
| 5 | 300 | 600 | 600 |
| 6 | 400 | 800 | 800 |
|
End of day 1 |
|||
| 7 | 500 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| 8 | 600 | 1,200 | 1,200 |
| 9 | 1,000 | 1,500 | 1,500 |
| 10 | 1,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
| 11 | 1,500 | 2,500 | 2,500 |
| 12 | 1,500 | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| 13 | 2,000 | 4,000 | 4,000 |
| 14 | 2,500 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| 15 | 3,000 | 6,000 | 6,000 |
| 16 | 4,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 |
| 17 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| 18 | 6,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 |
| 19 | 10,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 |
| 20 | 10,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 |
| 21 | 15,000 | 25,000 | 25,000 |
| 22 | 15,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 |
| 23 | 20,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 |
| 24 | 25,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 |
| 25 | 30,000 | 60,000 | 60,000 |
| 26 | 50,000 | 75,000 | 75,000 |
| 27 | 50,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 |
| 28 | 75,000 | 125,000 | 125,000 |
| 29 | 75,000 | 150,000 | 150,000 |
| 30 | 100,000 | 200,000 | 200,000 |
| 31 | 125,000 | 250,000 | 250,000 |
| 32 | 150,000 | 300,000 | 300,000 |
| 33 | 200,000 | 400,000 | 400,000 |
| 34 | 250,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 |
As play continues, players are eliminated (“bust”) when they lose all their chips. The field gradually shrinks until only one player remains.
Once again using a 600-player example, that’s 36 million chips in play at the start. Over time, those chips consolidate into fewer stacks until one player holds them all.
From Day 3, a shot clock is introduced: 15 seconds for pre-flop decisions and 30 seconds post-flop, with limited time extensions. This simply adds to the pressure on players.
There is a lot more nuance, but that outlines the core mechanics.
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