14th Anniversary Sunday Million Poker Tournament Sets Record With 93,016 EntriesThe $18,603,200 Prize Pool Was The Largest Ever On PokerStars and The Third-Biggest In Online Poker History |
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Online poker has been booming amid the coronavirus outbreak. Yet another example of this took place this past weekend. On Sunday, March 22, PokerStars kicked off the 14th Anniversary running of its largest weekly tournament, the Sunday Million. This special edition of the event featured a $12.5 million guaranteed prize pool for the $215 buy-in online poker tournament. It took only three hours for the 62,500 entries necessary to surpass the guarantee to be made.
By the time registration officially closed, a staggering total of 93,016 entries had been made. As a result, the final prize pool grew to $18,603,200, making this the largest event (in terms of prize money) ever held on PokerStars, and the third-largest in online poker history behind the 2018 partypoker MILLIONS Online ($21,780,000 prize pool) and the 2019 partypoker MILLIONS Online ($21,090,000 prize pool). Those events featured dramatically larger buy-ins than the Sunday Million, though, with price points of $5,300 and $10,300, respectively.
The tournament drew 60,898 unique players, with 32,118 re-entries made. The top 13,319 finishers made the money, with the top eight all receiving paydays worth six-figures or more. While the event kicked off on Sunday, it took until Tuesday evening for a champion to be decided. In the end, it was Brazil’s ‘AAAArthur’ who emerged victorious with the title and a top payout of $1,192,802. According to the PokerStars Blog, ‘AAAArthur’ won their way into the event through an $11 buy-in satellite, and then managed to convert that investment into nearly $1.2 million.
The champion was originally slated to make $1.5 million, but the final four players in this event struck an ICM deal that locked up the following payouts for them, while leaving $50,000 and the title to play for:
‘AAAArthur’ – $1,142,802
Stefan “CrAzY_sTeFaN” Piele Dragos – $921,328
‘caroline2963’ – $786,873
‘salonteskis’ – $826,920
‘AAAArthur’ won a preflop race with AQ against the pocket threes of ‘salonteskis’ to take a big lead into three-handed play, but Stefan “CrAzY_sTeFaN” Piele Dragos closed the gap a bit by knocking out ‘caroline2963’ in third.
Dragos was able to overtake the lead, doubling up with quad deuces against the full house of his opponent. ‘AAAArthur’ was able to regain control, though, before the final hand was dealt. ‘AAAArthur’ picked up 22 on the button and raised to 80,000,000. Dragos shoved for 600,349,310 holding 55 in the big blind. ‘AAAArthur’ called and was in rough shape, until the JJ2 flop gave them a full house. The A turn and 6 river secured the pot, the title and the additional $50,000 for ‘AAAArthur’, while Dragos was sent to the rail with the $921,328 he had locked up in the four-way deal.
Here is a look at the complete payouts for the final table players:
1. AAAArthur (Brazil) $1,192,802.46*
2. Stefan “CrAzY_sTeFaN” Piele Dragos (Romania) $921,328.12*
3. Caroline2963 (United Kingdom) $786,873.65*
4. salonteskis (Lithuania) $826,919.68*
5. AlexHoldz (Croatia) $329,356.63
6. Marios “Jully-19” Mansour (Cyprus) $225,108.02
7. tweny1 (Romania) $153,854.04
8. Pokerfrance (Germany) $105,154.58
9. Paulius “D3cor” Vaitiekunas (Lithuania) $71,869.74