Pokertars Sunday Million Anniversary Special ($1,500,000 GUARANTEED!)
Several years ago, it would have seemed absurd for anyone to suggest that an online tournament with a $215 entry fee could draw a field of over 10,000 players for a prize pool of over $2.1 million.
But that’s exactly what happened on March 11th, 2007 in the PokerStars Sunday Million Anniversary Special. PokerStars guaranteed a $1.5 million prize pool for this one, and ran even more satellites and promotions than usual.
Come 4pm that Sunday, a total of 10,508 players had directly bought in, won satellites, or used their tournament dollars to register and contribute to a total prize pool of $2,101,600.
Much like the World Series of Poker Main Event, this tournament brought together a large collective of amateurs and professionals, as it seemed no one playing the tournaments that Sunday was missing this one.
The structure of the tournament allowed for pretty big-stack play in the early levels, but as the tournament progressed, the average stack became less deep in relation to the blinds, and the luck factor became a really big issue.
With 100 players left, we noticed a few notable tournament pros still left in the field. Gavin ‘“wsop2005” Griffin took 97th place and Noah “Exclusive” Boeken was sent home in 53rd.
The final table did feature one fan favorite in Joshua Vanduyn, aka “pbdrunks.”
Here was the lineup for the final table, with chip counts:
Blinds 240,000/480,000 with 24,000 ante
gambforlife - 21,702,530
eZCash1 - 15,813,892
wsu70 - 10,971,524
francky2011 - 10,638,200
Othimua - 10,376,758
Zeddor - 9,374,880
xxallthenutz - 7,939,648
nickym998 - 7,718,842
pbdrunks - 5,287,726
Naturally we were looking for Josh to do well, as experience would play a huge role in a tournament that had been playing so long and for so much on the line.
Unfortunately, the best hand doesn't always hold up in poker. It took a while to bring the first elimination of the table. pbdrunks raised all in from early position for a little over 6 million with the blinds at 300k/600k. He was called by nickym998 in middle position. Joshua turned over two queens and nicky flipped over his A♠K♠ and the classic race situation went sour for pbdrunks when the king of clubs fell on the turn to send him home in 9th place.
As usual for such a large prize pool event, the table played fairly slow, with players taking turns stealing blinds and no one looking to take any huge risks for their chips with so much money on the line.
When the tournament eventually got five-handed, the players began to talk about making a deal that would guarantee them all a fair amount of the remaining prize pool. For anyone who is not familiar with a chip chop, it basically means that a poker room manager enters the chat and delegates who will receive what based on how many chips they have in their stack in relation to the money remaining in the prize pool.
As the players got their chip counts, everyone began to agree, except nickym998 who said he wanted a guaranteed 200k, 60k more than the amount Lee Jones offered him in the chop numbers. The players immediately denied such an outrageous amount, and they eventually settled on giving him 160k, leaving 30k in the middle for the winner.
The chop counts ended up looking like this...
nickym998: $160,950
gambforlife: $119,209
francky2011: $102,177
Othimua: $103,142
Zeddor: $101,972
(Also $30,000 reserved for the eventual winner)
Play loosened up tremendously after the deal was made, with players raising and calling more liberally, trying to build their stacks to contend for the final $30,000 allocated for the winner.
Play eventually got three-handed, when Zeddor won a pot that all but closed the deal for him.
Gambforlife raised his small blind to $4 million (blinds 500k/1 million) and Zeddor called in the big blind. The flop brought the J♠A♠J♦ and gambforlife check-raised Zeddor’s $2 million bet to $4 million. Zeddor called and the K♥ came on the turn. Gambforlife fired $6 million and Zeddor again called. The 5♠ on the river prompted a check from gambforlife and Zeddor bet out enough to put him all in. Gambforlife called and showed the A♣Q♠ for two pair and Zeddor turned up the 8♠3♠ for the rivered flush.
Zeddor took in the $73 million chip pot, which gave him nearly all of the chips in play. He would go on to win the tournament, knocking out nickym998 a short while later.
After half a day of playing, one of the largest online tournaments in poker history was finally complete, and Lee Jones and company had successfully written another chapter in the internet poker books.
[Editor’s Note: Since this event, Lee Jones has
announced that he will be moving on from
PokerStars and has taken a job with the
European Poker Tour [EPT] as their head tournament
director. We at Bluff salute his years
of hard work and commitment to online
poker. And we will all miss his witticisms!]
For more in-depth online tournament
review, check out Bluff’s own
“Sunday Report” at www.bluffmagazine.
com/sundayreport
