Home / Poker News March 2011 / PokerStars’ $5 Million Sunday Million – Luke Vrabel wins
PokerStars’ $5 Million Sunday Million – Luke Vrabel wins
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2011-03-07 15:35
This online poker weekend was thoroughly dominated by PokerStars’ anniversary edition of the Sunday Million. The event offered a guaranteed prize-pool of $5 million, plus a fly ride for the winner: a Lamborghini Gallardo. Needless to say, the draw was immense, and no fewer than 59,128 players registered for the tournament, combining $215 buy-ins to create a $11,825,600 record breaking prize-pool.
The event was a true record breaker in just about every other respect too. Given the large size of the resulting prize-pool, the winner was guaranteed a 7-figure payday to go with his Lamborghini, but there was a massive 9-way deal at the top that eventually prevented the winner, Luke Vrabel from setting yet another record with his prize.
Vrabel ‘only’ took home $671,093, which wasn’t even the largest prize awarded. The biggest chunk of change went to 3rd place man wrzr123, who took home $844,209. 5th place man, Syndrome1977 also won more than Vrabel: he took down $799,843.
Everyone in the top 9 finished in 6-figures, the smallest prize being that of 9th place man Battmeister’s $263,888.
The money bubble took about 5 hours to burst. All-in-all, the event lasted for 14.5 hours. Once the final table was reached, the participants immediately began to bargain. It took them 40 minutes of negotiations to agree on a deal. Apparently no one was particularly interested in the Gallardo, or they may have just figured that the winner deserved to get that as a trophy.
Vrabel didn’t have the largest stack when the deal was struck, but he managed to navigate his way to the top, outplaying large-stack wrzr123 among others.
Full Tilt attempted to mount a counter offensive to
PokerStars’ record-breaking event, by hosting a $1.5 million guarantee of their own, which paled in comparison however. That poker tournament was won by Brian Kim, who took down $411,700 for his efforts.
