Home / Poker News July 2008 / Who says July is a bad month for online poker? Not PokerStars…
Who says July is a bad month for online poker? Not PokerStars…
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2008-07-30 18:56
Ask around a bit, most poker affiliates will tell you that the month of July is an abysmal one revenue–wise year after year. This is when most people go on their summer vacation, and for at least a few weeks, online poker becomes secondary even for the most astute players. Does this mean anything for the online poker giants like PokerStars and Full Tilt? It looks like it doesn’t.
Because of the sheer volume of players they have, they are pretty much immune to these season’s variations at least as far as their flagship weekly guaranteed tournaments are concerned. Take PokerStars for instance. Their weekly Sunday Million is beyond doubt one of the biggest weekly GTDs in online poker anywhere. Covering the guarantee for such a huge prize-pool event would probably prove an impossible challenge for most poker rooms, especially during the peak of the summer season. Leave it to PokerStars though to lure enough players to not only comfortably cover the guarantee, but to generate nice revenue too.
Last weekend, over 8,000 people chose the Sunday Million over basking in the sun or taking a dip in the pool. That propelled the prize-pool to an almost incredible $1.6 million. Not only did PokerStars surpass the $1 million mark on their Sunday Million, they also did it on their Sunday Warm-Up too, as there were over 1,500 rebuys registered there.
In the Sunday Million, after about 9 hours of play, the first prize of $138,101 (+$30,000) went to avkid86. Second place strahhh2 scored $118,000 after a deal the top 4 finishers struck, followed by pokerbrat13 in third (who rode an incredible streak of good luck there) with $138,077 and Gambooooool in 4th with $113,016.
The Sunday Warmup saw an almost equally impressive prize-pool ($1,123,400) as the guarantee was $1 million (because of the x2 promotion PokerStars is having these days). The top 3 finishers made a deal here too, thus the final standings took the following shape: richlizard ended up in 1st and won $114,662.37 (+$20,000), followed by Showm4n and LION8HART with $120,409.59 and $78,356.64 respectively. The final hand was a 8d,3d against a K,2o, as the former caught 2 pairs on the flop and never relinquished the lead.
