In what PokerStars is claiming as the new record for “richest online tournament ever”, held last Sunday, Toronto’s Kyle ‘First-Eagle’ Weir was the last man standing of 62,116 players that registered for the $215 buy-in Sunday Million 10th Anniversary tournament. Overall, a prize pool of $12,423,200 was generated, surpassing the previous best of $12,215,000, held by the PokerStars 2010 World Championship of Online Poker Main Event.
Though first place was slated at 2,000,000 guaranteed, a six way deal still left the eventual winner and currently unemployed 24 year old a newly made millionaire; ringing in at $1,146,574.65. Talking to writers at PokerStars about his win, Kyle said “The feeling is unbelievable. I still feel like I’m dreaming and can’t believe it’s happened. It’s an incredibly fortunate experience.” Apparently, the young player now plans to make a living at poker, pay off his student loans and send his parents on nice holiday.
Here are the details of the deal:
| 1 | First-Eagle (Canada) | $1,146,574.65 |
| 2 | Unstoffable (Spain) | $580,724.34 |
| 3 | BLAABAR (Sweden) | $709,896.78 |
| 4 | tunafish919 (Australia) | $627,317.26 |
| 5 | Dimedroll (Russia) | $995,996.85 |
| 6 | SkunkDen (Australia) | $758,986.42 |
In total 7,682 players cashed in the tournament, (normally the average number of the entire field for the Sunday major event), with a minimum payout of $521.16.
$10,300 High Roller
PokerStars ran a 10th Anniversary High Roller event, which featured a $10,300 buy-in and a guaranteed prize pool of $500,000. By the time registration closed, 187 of the world’s elite online players had bought in, generating a prize pool of $1,870,000.
While ‘jcl87’ from Australia, scooped the first prize of $402,050, several Top Canadians also cashed in; Russell “rdcrsn” Carson came 13th for $28, 050, Team PokerStars Pro Jonathan Duhamel, placed 15th for the same, and Mike McDonald added a decent pay-day of $18,700 for his 23rd place finish; adding to a decent day on the virtual felts after also shipping a PCA package.
POKERSTARS LAUNCHES TURBO CHAMPIONSHIP OF ONLINE POKER
For those that are looking forward to their next shot, PokerStars also announced it’s inaugural “TCOOP” an online “Turbo” format championship series that will incorporate 50 different events across 11 days and guarantee $10 million in prizes. Buy-ins will range from $5.50 to $2,100 and the series features a $700 main event, which has a guarantee of $1.5 million.
Said to be the “fast-paced version of the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) tournament series” the “TCOOPs” will certainly appeal to a broad spectrum of players in today’s fast paced poker world.
