Anyone familiar with Pocketfives (or online poker, for that matter) knows the name Andy McLEOD, who has absolutely crushed Multitable Tournaments over the past year and climbed into the top 10 of our rankings. Since the debut of our regional rankings, I have noticed there is an interesting race for second in Australia. There are five players in a dead heat for second place on the Australian leaderboard, with second and 6th place separated by only 240 points at the time of this writing. These five players are Kochan, teek_00, stevoL, Oz_Champ, and juzlearnin. <READMORE>I was interested to know the relationship between teek_00 and Kochan, the top two of this group, since teek_00 lists his greatest online win as a series of $5 heads up matches versus Kochan. It turns out these two have been good friends since high school, along with another top ten player from Australia, Volcheko.
The three friends spent a week snowboarding in southern Australia recently. Teek_00 said about the trip, “I proceeded to break my wrists, as snowboarders do. Typing is pretty tough, but it shouldn’t keep me away from poker for too long.” Since his return from vacation, teek_00 has continued to put pressure on his mates, including a 4k score on Pokerstars with a 3rd place finish in the $109 20k guaranteed. When I asked him about the heads up match between him and Kochan, teek_00 replied, “It was basically just for bragging rights. He always claimed to be the better all around poker player, but I put him in his spot.”
Kochan still holds the edge in the Australian PLB and has some impressive scores of his own, so the bragging rights do not all belong to teek_00. Kochan and Oz_Champ were unavailable for comment for the purposes of this article, but I was able to speak with juzlearnin and steveoL.
With 2,095 PLB points, juzlearnin is right in the thick of this Aussie PLB race. He doesn’t get too wrapped up in the idea of rankings, though. In his own words, “the reason I want to be ranked is because it will mean I am making nice money.” Juzlearnin has been playing online for about three years and recently quit his day job as a chef to pursue poker full time. He is certainly not the most risk adverse individual, as he lists his outside interests as “surfing and jumping out of planes.”
When I first contacted stevoL about this article, he was in 6th place with only 1500 PLB points. I am glad I included him in the interview, however, because since then he has gone on a tear, adding 700 PLBs to his total and moving up into 4th place in Australia. I should have given him more credit when he said, “I’ll be ranked #2 in Australia within a month, and hopefully then we can get another Aussie onto the big leaderboard. I’d love to put some pressure on [Andy McLEOD].”
I found an interesting diversity of opinion on the driving force of poker’s popularity in Australia. I asked each player the following question: “In the U.S., we refer to the "Moneymaker Effect" as one of the main reasons for the poker boom. Have you experienced a "Hachem effect" in Australia?”
StevoL responded, “Poker is HUGE in Australia right now. We are definately holding our own for a small country. I live five minutes from the Crown Casino in Melbourne. They host the Aussie Millions, and it is a world class poker operation. There hasn't been too much coverage about Hachem on TV, but everyone definately knows about the Aussie guy that won like 10 million (aussie $) in Vegas. Down here the WPT shows are what everyone watches, because they're on free-to-air TV. The WSOP coverage is only on some cable that not everyone has, so I really doubt many people have even heard of Moneymaker here.”
Teek_00 replied, “I guess to an extent, yes. But with getting ESPN and all the other poker shows before Hachem won, I think a strong case could be made for the Moneymaker Effect being greater than the Hachem effect, even in Australia.”
Whatever the reasons, stevoL was bullish on Poker in Australia, predicting, “I do know one thing: you WILL be seeing more and more Aussies in the online scene in the immediate future. It’s just tough because there is no advertising for online sites here. Also we are naturally outdoorsy people who love sport, so sitting at a computer doesn’t necessarily fit our profile....but it will happen!”
Pocketfives wishes stevoL, Kochan, teek_00, juzlearnin and Oz_Champ the best of luck in chasing down their countryman Andy McLEOD. In the meantime, we will enjoy watching the growth of poker in Australia and around the world.
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