When you're sitting inside the Crown Poker Room to watch or play a poker tournament, you're totally removed from everything that's happening in the outside world. The poker room itself is like its own world, and we're locked away in a bunker, oblivious to what's going on outside of these walls.
So we had absolutely no idea of the havoc that was raging outside in Melbourne last night as torrential rain and heavy thunderstorms swept through Melbourne. Flash flooding saw many homes and businesses damaged as the wettest June day on record saw over 50mm of rain bucket down in just a few short hours.
The Crown Poker Room has been known to feel the effects of flooding in the past due to its below ground level location, but we can assure you that things are dry and well here. The only flooding we've seen is at the registration desk where a mass of people arrived this morning for Day 1c of the ANZPT Repechage Main Event.
With 224 entrants on Day 1a, followed by a strong showing of 253 yesterday, we're currently sitting at 477 total entrants after the first two flights. We can confirm that before play kicked off today that 275 players had already registered which means that the final total is going to be above 750 to satisfy the $750,000 prize pool guarantee. This also means that this event has surpassed the previous best for the total number of entries for the Melbourne Poker Championships Main Event.
Registration is open all throughout the day, so we hope to see plenty of latecomers and a big field today to boost that prize pool even further.
Once again we'll be bringing you stories from the ANZPT Repechage here on the PokerStars Blog while our friends at PokerNews provide the live feed of all the updates throughout the day. Stay tuned!