As noted on bwin’s poker blog the activities surrounding the Aussie Millions are awesome for their own sake offering sumptuous opportunities.  However, inside the Aussie Millions was where the really high rollers were enjoying themselves in the High Stakes poker tournament.  Dan Shak who made a name for himself a couple of years ago at a Texas Hold’em No Limit Tournament at the  Taj Mahal in Atlantic City (The US Poker Open) and on various World Series of Poker telecasts has recently been overshadowed by his ex-wife Beth Shak’s self-promotion.  Beth Shak has garnered more TV time, most notably recently featured on an episode of MTV’s cribs with her children, implying the luxurious house they live in was paid for from her poker winnings.   

True, the divorcee of Dan Shak and receiver of a big chunk of his Wall Street earned millions has been featured on a final table at the WSOP winning a big paycheck for her involvement and has other poker cashes to her name.  You might remember her jumping around on the telecast made memorable particularly when mixing it up with Phil Hellmuth, but to suggest their opulent lifestyle was courtesy of her poker money is more than an embellishment.

Dan picked up his poker hobby as a sideline activity to his successful Wall Street career and he actually may in fact be a profitable player but for both their bottom lines it’s more hobby than career.  Beth caught the bug as Dan enjoyed some tournament successes.   Nightly online poker play became a staple of their domestic life.  Still, despite their poker successes both he and his ex-wife are rich enough that even if he were losing money overall the buy-ins are but a drop in the bucket and poker even at the 10k, 25k and 100k buy-ins is still an almost inexpensive hobby for them.  So, it’s no surprise Dan Shak put up the 100k to take part in the Aussie Millions high-rollers tournament.  Sure, the field included only the best or the richest but Dan was hardly out of his element or his league.   Now he’s the poker Shak with the biggest score in the family.

When he found himself face to face with world’s best player Phil Ivey, he showed no fear and outlasted the wunderkind.  Shak added to his Scrooge McDuck like bank vault by winning $1.2 million dollars AUD (which is about $1.08 million USD).   Shak didn’t only have to overcome the top player in the world he also had to overcome a bit of a chip stack deficit.  Phil Ivey had a 1.38 to 1.06 million chip lead when heads up play began.

It didn’t take long for Shak to beat the legendary Ivey.   Shak built his chip lead to almost 2 million chips to Ivey’s half million.  That set up he final hand of the tournament came when Shak moved all-in preflop.   Ivey called and was a leader in a dominating fashion.  Much like his recent WSOP Main Event bust-out the dominance only lasted until the flop where his better kicker couldn’t hold up against the paired kicker of Shak.  Ivey had raised from the button pre-flop, Shak moved him in and Ivey virtually snap called.  Ivey’s A10, both diamonds was for the moment crushing the A7, both clubs of Shak.  An Ivey double up seemed likely and that of course would bring the heads up battle closer to even.

Then  the flop came a rainbow Q75.  Suddenly, Ivey was dominated.  Desperate to pair his better kicker it was not to be and Ivey had to be having Darvin Moon and Chris Moneymaker flashbacks as the board bricked out.    Ivey had to settle for second place and  $600,000 AUD.   The prize payouts were as follows  1. Dan Shak, $1,200,000 2. Phil Ivey, $600,000 3. Billy Jordanou, $300,000 4. Tony Bloom, $200,000 5. Tony G, $100,000.  Dan Shak upped his lifetime winnings to approximately $2 million dollars.

 As big a day at it was for Dan Shak’s career earnings it was arguably an even bigger day for Phil Ivey’s even though he made less.  Despite his second place finish Ivey was still a winner.  The additional cash that he won propelled him to first place in the all time tournament winnings list.   Ivey is now incrementally a bigger winner than Daniel Negreanu.  It’s hard to say it’s easy to win 4 million dollars in live tournament poker, but considering the number of pros hovering around the 2 to 4 million mark and how few are over 10 million, it is truly an accomplishment for Ivey to have over 12.5 million.

With over $12.8 million dollars in lifetime tournament cashes Ivey is looking down on his friend Daniel Negreanu who has $12.43 million. Negreanu recently pipped Jamie Gold.  The bulk of Gold’s winnings were in one tournament but it was still enough for him to be number one since that WSOP Main Event vicotry in 2006.   As it stands, Gold is about 230,000 behind Negreanu with $12.2 million dollars.   Considering Gold had to chop his Main Event winnings the numbers are a little skewed, but no telling how many, if any, of Ivey or Negreanu’s tournament dollars were split too.  nge.