WPT® Australia Championship Kicks Off at The Star Sydney

The main event has arrived.

It's the A$5,000 WPT® Australia Championship, the flagship of the WPT® Australia festival. It got underway today at The Star Sydney. It will run through to a livestreamed final table on September 30. It's the deeper, tougher half of the festival's two-title bill, and the player who wins it puts their name on the Mike Sexton WPT® Champions Cup.

With more starting flights still to come, there's time to get in. Here's the format, how to enter, and what's on the line.

The A$5,000 Championship runs September 24–30 at The Star Sydney's Star Poker room. It's a championship built for patient, deep-stacked play rather than a preflop shootout. Players start each Day 1 with 50,000 chips and 60-minute levels.

The structure runs three starting flights. Day 1A opened today, September 24, with Day 1B on the 25th and Day 1C on the 26th. The field converges for Day 2 on September 27 and plays down to a livestreamed final table on September 30.

If you're in or near Sydney, you haven't missed your shot.

Two more Day 1 flights follow today's opener, so you can still fire a bullet on September 25 or 26. Late registration and re-entry stay open until the start of Level 11 on each Day 1, late into the evening. So, a slow start or an early exit doesn't have to end your tournament.

Check Star Poker's official schedule for exact start times and the late-registration cut-off before you head down.

This is the festival's marquee prize.

Beyond the money, the WPT® Australia champion earns a WPT® title. This comes with a place among the game's honour roll on the Mike Sexton WPT® Champions Cup. It's the most coveted trophy on offer at The Star this fortnight. To top it off, the champ gets a ticket to the season-ending WPT® World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas in December.

And the closing stages play out in front of a global audience. The final table is livestreamed, so whoever's left when it matters will be doing it on camera.

The Championship opens on the back of an exciting Prime result.

Two days ago, the A$1,500 WPT® Prime Australia Championship wrapped up a 1,036-entry run with one of the comebacks of the year. Cooper Feltham climbed from 17 big blinds at the final table to the title. He denied Ling Liu a shot at winning the WPT® Prime crown, and completing a straight on the river to seal it.

That was the accessible half of the bill. The A$5,000 flagship now brings a smaller but stronger field. Higher buy-in, deeper stacks, and the tour's most experienced players hunting the Champions Cup. If the WPT® Prime title set the tone, the Championship is where the festival's biggest names go to work.

You don't have to be at The Star to see how it ends.

The Championship's final table is livestreamed globally. Wherever you are, you can follow the closing stages on September 30 as Sydney crowns its WPT® Australia champion.