Christchurch Casino Poker Player Wins NZD$107,000
New Zealand poker player, Jon Pye hits the jackpot with an NZD$107,000 win at Christchurch Casino’s Main Event. The NZ casino hosted a poker championship and Pye defeated Scott Hamilton-Hill who landed a cool NZD$66,000 as the runner-up. The poker tournament took 29 hours of play to complete, broken down into three days.
Christchurch Casino Poker Tournament
The poker series was contested by 238 Kiwi poker players. Each player put up a betting stake of NZD$1950 to gain entry into the marquee tournament that produced a prize pool total of NZD $428,400. Coincidentally, this is not Pye’s first win for 2019. Pye, who owns a painting business in Christchurch, made NZD$11,600 in the South Island champs for a fourth-place finish. In other tournaments earlier in the year, he cashed in NZD$3000 for 8th place in the Canterbury champs, NZD$4,250 for fourth in the Pot Limit Omaha rebuy event and NZD$1,200 for being 10th in the Bounty event. The highest win for the year came in the Auckland WPT Main Event where he landed fifth-place finish to claim NZD$39,960.
Pye Credits Seeing Through the Bluff for Win
When asked about his poker success, Pye credits his attention to detail. He explains that he is able to read people’s bluff and take advantage of their ‘mannerisms’. Pay attention to “what they do, how they act, how they look at their cards”. Pye originally started playing poker in 2003 but he only made his first major event final in 2008 at the Christchurch Main Event.
The tournament win was also made special by the defeat to local poker pro Scott Hamilton-Hill. Hamilton-Hill is a former World Series of Poker winner in 2018 where he walked away with NZD$440,710. Earlier in the week, he only managed a 7th place finish in the South Island Champs to claim NZD$5,100.
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