Another record for PokerStars

A life changer

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better, PokerStars take yet another step forward in world dominance by hosting the most valuable tournament in online poker history.

After a fantastic December of 10th anniversary celebrations that has seen amongst other things a new official world record for the largest ever online poker tournament, Sunday 18th December was to see another record for the world’s biggest poker site.

At 14.30 ET the world renown weekly Sunday Million tournament kicked off with a guaranteed prize pool of $10 million.

With 62,116 players entering the event during the extended registration period of 180 minutes, a prize pool of some $12,423,000 was reached and a new record was set with this tournament having beaten the previous record by $208k which was set in the main event of the 2010 WCOOP which reached a prize pool of $12,215,000.

It’s no real surprise that this feat was achieved as the dream of possibly doing so was actually spoken about by a PokerStars official during the special world record radio show on the 3rd December, who said, that doing so would be the “icing on the cake” at the end of the anniversary celebrations.

With just 6 hours having passed since the tournament began, the number of players left had dropped to just 5,884 with everyone being guaranteed at least $521.16, but with so much money at stake that small sum would have been the last thing on the players’ minds.

Just 30 minutes later after some frantic all in action the numbers had reduced further to just 3,747. The early chip leader at this stage was FOO-92 from Germany with a stack of 1,156,755, over 200,000 chips ahead of the second placed player.

After 7.5 hours of play, FOO-92 had slipped to 4th place on almost 1.5 million in chips with SikaTrx from Canada storming away in first position with over 2.2 million.

Unfortunately for those two early leaders they were not to experience the glory and cash that the final table was to bring, but they both achieved credible placing’s with SikaTrx departing in 79th place for almost $9k and FOO-92 making it all the way to 33rd for a pay day of nearly $16k.

After an incredible 14 hours of play the final table had been reached and had already seen the departure of three players. Yokouno from Israel went out in 9th place for over $86.5k. Kaalen from Sweden took home almost $120k for 8th slot and fireballdio of Portugal picked up a very nice pay day of over $182k.

At this stage the remaining 6 players discussed the possibility of a deal and after some confusion over the way to split the money, all 6 finally gave the thumbs up and after 14 hours and 32 minutes of playing time the game was resumed.

The final 6 chip stacks at the deal making stage were:

Dimedroll (Russia) $155,049,965
First-Eagle (Canada) $145,106,248
SkunkDen (Australia) $101,327,631
BLAABAR (Sweden) $91,450,827
Unstoffable (Spain) $65,641,413
tuafish919 (Australia) $62,763,916

Once play had resumed it took just 8 minutes to see SkunkDen depart in 6th place for over $758k when their all in with Q 8 OS was shot down by the AA of Dimedroll.

Dimedroll was to suffer a similar fate when losing out to the monster AA of First Eagle and being despatched in 5th place for a cool $995,996.85, not exactly something to grumble over.

Next out in 4th was tunafish919 for a pay day of $627,317.26 after going all in with A7 but facing the dreaded KK of First Eagle.

BLAABAR was out in 3rd place when 10 10 failed to hold against the 4 4 of First Eagle who caught a 4 to make a set, but with winnings of $709,896.78 must surely have been smiling.

The heads up battle lasted just a couple of minutes and after 15 hours and 3 minutes of play Unstoffable came out in 2nd for $580,724.34 and First Eagle walked away with the claim to fame and honour of having won the richest online poker tournament in history and an incredible $1,146,74.65 in cash.

Not all poker rooms are equal with respect to tournaments. There is no pokerstars rakeback, but PokerStars is the online poker room with the best selection of tournaments, from freerols to small to large to huge.