72 Billion Hands
The 10th Anniversary Celebrations just keep on coming at the world’s biggest poker site. Over the past week PokerStars held a Special Edition Milestone Hand which, over the course of 301 milestone hands, gave away more than $1 million in cash bonuses to players at ring game tables.
The final Mega Milestone hand (72-billionth) took place at a $0.02/$0.05 micro stakes six-max table, and awarded a minimum of $10,000 to each player dealt into the hand. The winner of the hand was “Kozlicek_x” from the Czech Republic who picked up $24,300. A total of $95,330 was shared out among the six players at the table.
In the lead up to the final hand, PokerStars was dealing a million hands approximately every 11 minutes! Get the PokerStars download at http://www.poker-download.eu/pokerstars-download/.
$1 Million Sunday Storm
The Sunday Storm is consistently the most popular real money online tournament of the week, with more than 30,000 players regularly hitting the tables. For the 10th Anniversary Celebration edition on December 11, PokerStars increased the guarantee from $200,000 to $1 million and stuck $100 bounties on the heads of Team PokerStars members.
When registration closed on Sunday night, the field totaled 116,400 that created a prize pool of $1,164,000. It pushed the total number of PokerStars players involved in the action online on Sunday night to more than 410,000 – a new record for the site!
The huge field for the Sunday Storm special tourney meant that play lasted more than 12 hours, saw 15,166 players make the cash, and awarded all the final table players with five-figure paydays.
A deal was done between the final six players, which saw eventual winner, “chrjs2k” from Germany, emerge with $81,604.01. Of the final six, “Speedyy1986”, who came fourth in the end, got the biggest cut of the prize pool, earning $87,437.94.
$10m Sunday Million and High Roller
The PokerStars 10th Anniversary reaches its spectacular climax this coming Sunday, December 18, with two massive events. First up, at 14.30 ET (20.30 CET), is the $215 Sunday Million 10th Anniversary tournament, featuring a $10 million guaranteed prize pool and $2 million guaranteed for first place. One hour later at 15.30 ET (21.30 CET), the 10th Anniversary $10,300 High Roller event get under way, with a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool.
Satellites to the Sunday Million are taking place around the clock, and are set to award thousands of seats in the tourney. Anyone could turn $1 into $2 million! Meanwhile, players can qualify for the High Roller via Step 6 satellites. Click the tabs ‘Events’ > ‘10’ > ‘All’ in the PokerStars download to find out how to qualify.
Sunday majors
Slightly overshadowed by the Sunday Storm Special last weekend, but not to be outdone, the week’s two big Sunday Majors on PokerStars still had monster fields and prize pools. The $215 Sunday Warm-Up got going at 11.00 ET with 3,680 players and a prize pool of $736,000.
By the time play got down to four-handed there were three players from the Czech Republic and one from the UK still in with a chance of the title. A deal was then struck and a short while later the sole Brit – “Zimmy86” – emerged the victor, scooping $87,721.71.
Meanwhile, the $215 Sunday Million saw a total of 6,983 players generate a prize pool of $1,396,600 – well in excess of the $1 million guarantee. Nearly 12 hours after it started, “JJ@mess” from the Czech Republic took it down for an adjusted first prize of $176,132.32, after a three-way chop was negotiated.
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EPT Prague
The European Poker Tour’s latest stop came to a thrilling conclusion on Saturday, as PokerStars qualifier Martin Finger won the sixth main event of Season 8 for €720,000. It was a slightly adjusted first prize after the 21-year-old business science student did a deal with second-placed David Boyacayin from the Netherlands. The Dutchman took home €535,000.
The event was perhaps most notable for its huge attendance, with the 722-player field setting a record for largest ever tournament in the Czech Republic. It also improved significantly on last year’s EPT Prague event field of 563, showing the growth of the game in Eastern Europe.
APPT Seoul
The Asia Pacific Poker Tour Season 5 schedule has been boosted by the addition of a stop in Seoul, Korea, from March 7-11. The Paradise Walkerhill Casino will play host to the five-day, five-event poker festival, which will feature a KRW 3,000,000 (US $2,600) buy-in main event.
The last time that the event took place was APPT Season 2 back in 2008, when Japanese player Yoshihiro Tasaka won the equivalent of USD $128,199.
Join the Carnival!
For the first time ever, Sao Paulo will host back-to-back tournaments in February 2012. Dubbed the ‘Grand Finals Carnival Poker Festival’, the Brazilian city will host the Grand Final of the Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT) from February 17-20, while the Brazil Poker Tour (BPT) main event will follow immediately after from February 21-24. The combined festivals will be held at the Sheraton WTC Hotel and for the first time in LAPT or BPT history will offer Pot Limit Omaha and Mixed Game tournaments.
For more information, please visit www.lapt.com and www.brasilpokertour.com.
2012 PCA
It’s now just three weeks until the ninth annual PokerStars Caribbean Adventure gets under way in the Bahamas and the prize pool is shooting up. To date, 378 players have qualified for a PCA main event package online, a further 100 have won their packages via the 10th Anniversary Giveaway, while another 51 have registered through their PokerStars accounts. That brings the grand total to 529 and a prize pool of nearly $5.3 million.
Online qualifiers will continue running into the New Year, so there are still plenty of chances to join the party. There are also four live $1,100 super satellites taking place in the Caribbean on January 6-7 for those heading out to the PCA without a seat in the main event already locked up.
Side event registration is also now available in the PokerStars client by clicking on ‘Events’ > ‘PCA’ > ‘Qualifiers’.
Finally, this week sees the culmination of eight rounds of FPP tournaments in the Mega-Path qualifiers. The 321,000 FPP buy-in tournament, which takes place on December 19 at 01.00 ET, will give those players who bought into the earlier rounds for just a handful of Frequent Player Points, the chance to qualify for a PCA package worth more than $15,000!
Team Pros on a roll in Vegas
Team PokerStars Pros Jason Mercier and Vanessa Selbst have been two of the most consistent tournament players on the circuit over the past few years with a host of titles and millions of dollars in the bank between them.
So it was no surprise to see them both going deep at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas last weekend. Mercier shipped the $100,000 Super High Roller event for $683,767 after besting the elite field of 23 players, while Vanessa Selbst finished third of 413 in the $10,000 main event, which was good for $338,351.
The results took Selbst’s lifetime live tournament winnings to more than $4.7 million in six years and Mercier’s to more than $7.4 million in just four years.
