While the novel coronavirus is roaming around the world, it is a decent time for poker players to earn some money. Most recently, a Brazilian player called AAAArthur has become the winner of Sunday Million.
What is Sunday Million?
The Sunday Million 14th Anniversary kicked off at PokerStars on March 22, with a $12,500,000 guarantee meant that it would be the biggest tournament in the 19-year history of PokerStars. But it turned out that this figure was far from the ceiling for the largest poker room in the world because after the first day of the tournament the prize pool increased by more than a third.
In order to collect the 62,500 necessary players, the Starzam had 3 hours of late registration. Over the next hours of the game, the total number of participants was 86,172, and the total prize pool increased to $17,234,400.
The only two events in the history of online poker with the largest prize pools were partypoker Millions Online in 2018 and 2019, which exceeded $21,000,000. Prior to the Sunday Million 14th Anniversary, PokerStars’ biggest tournament was the 10th anniversary of the Sunday Million – with a prize pool of $12,423,200.
While online casinos relatively rarely offer bets on poker, this event gained so much attention and popularity that prominent online casinos worldwide reversed their decision and accepted bets. Most notably Nordic countries and especially Norwegian casinos known among local citizens as nye Norske casinoer were at the forefront of offering options to poker players. The main reason for Norwegians was the fact that a Norwegian poker player was also taking part in the event. But ultimately, he did not manage to achieve astounding results.
In the second day of the tournament, several eminent poker pros continued the game (the number of chips is indicated in brackets): Anatoly “NL_Profit” Filatov (384,476), Patrick “pads1161” Leonard (110,532), Alex “bigfox86” Foxen (85,166), Kristen “krissyb24” Bicknell (43,897) and others.
Final result
The attendance of the event was so huge that it allowed covering the guarantee almost one and a half times: instead of the $12,500,000 prize money, the players shared $18,602,300 of the prize pool.
This amount was also collected thanks to the re-entry – each player could make up to five re-entries. The tournament gathered 93,016 entries, of which 60,898 were unique entries, and 32,118 were re-entries. Late registration also did its job: between the end of the first day and the beginning of the second day, 7,671 entries were made to the tournament.
From $11 to $1,192,802
The champion of the tournament was the Brazilian player AAArthur, whose previous largest online prize money was $91. Like many other participants in the tournament, the Brazilian was selected for the anniversary SM through a satellite for $11.
AAArthur increased its investment by more than 100,000 times – its prize for the victory amounted to $1,192,802. Another seven-figure payout was guaranteed to a runner-up, but because of the 4-max deal, there was only one-millionth prize.
Other participants:
AAArthur (Brazil) – $1,192,802;
Stefan “CrAzY_sTeFaN” Piele Dragos (Romania) – $921,328;
“Caroline2963” (Great Britain) – $786.873;
“Salonteskis” (Lithuania) $826,919.
