Toby Lewis takes down A$50,000 Challenge for A$818,054

Toby managed to be the last man standing in the $50K event after finishing as the runner-up in the $25K Challenge.

"I didn’t even intend on playing it; I was so tired after the AU$25,000 Challenge. But it looked like such a good event,"

The A$50,000 Challenge at this year's Aussie Millions generated a record-setting 62-entry strong field. Just a few days after losing heads-up to Rainer Kempe in the A$25,000 Challenge, Lewis managed to close down this event and now has over $6.3 million in total live earnings, good for the 6th spot on England's All-Time Money List.

"I’m just very fortunate. I think I played good and ran good. I didn’t even intend on playing it; I was so tired after the AU$25,000 Challenge. But it looked like such a good event; it got so much more players than last year so kinda felt the need to jump in and the guys were willing me in, so I just went for it."

Originally unscheduled Day 3 started with five players. At this point, Thomas Mühlöcker was the shortest stack, but he managed to score two double-ups against Bjorn Li and also took a sizeable pot against Dominik Nitsche, to climb as high as second place. It was Li, who busted first, he lost his last chips against Lewis, and left the table in 5th place to pick up his hard-earned A$235,600.

Nitsche then put his chips into the middle holding ace-five against the pocket tens of Manig Löser's, but despite picking up multiple outs on the turn, couldn't avoid elimination and busted in 4th place for A$323,950.

Three-handed play started with Lewis holding a sizeable lead, with more than half of the chips in play in front of him. It was Mühlöcker, who eventually busted when he lost a race holding ace-king against the pocket sixes of Toby. The Austrian eliminated in third place, which earned him A$412,300.


Runner-up Manig Löser

Löser and Lewis decided to look at the numbers for a possible deal, but the former eventually declined. He was in a 1-9 disadvantage, he couldn't be able to gain much more money as wanted to try his luck.

Manig had a big rush after that, he managed to climb back and had 1.3 million to Lewis' 1.8 million with the blinds of 12K/24K. With the stack being more even, they finally came to an agreement, which saved Toby A$818,054, while A$772,246 for Manig.

The two then decided to flip for the title. Toby won the flip and became the champion of the 2019 Aussie Millions Event #12: AU$50,000 Challenge.

Final results

*denotes heads-up deal

Position Player Country Prize (AUD) Prize (USD)
1 Toby Lewis United Kingdom $818,054* $588,999*
2 Manig Loeser Germany $772,246* $556,017*
3 Thomas Muehloecker Austria $412,300 $296,856
4 Dominik Nitsche Germany $323,950 $233,244
5 Bjorn Li Hong Kong $235,600 $169,632
6 Tobias Ziegler Germany $206,150 $148,428
7 Michael Zhang United Kingdom $176,700 $127,224