I just saw the first 800,000 ante in my life. I wasn’t alone. At least 17,000 other people saw it too. How many chips do you think that is exactly? How many men would be required to help you push it forward prior to each deal? How many wheel barrows would be needed just to carry it to the table? And that’s just an ante. How much heavy machinery would be required for a three bet?
All right, all this was virtual, because I’m talking about the Ninth Anniversary Sunday Million that finished a short while ago and which, as expected, proved a tournament that was all about big numbers.
To start with there was $9,000,000. That was the amount guaranteed in the prize pool, which would actually be $10,086,400 when registration closed. Then there was $1,000,000 guaranteed to the winner, another figure that increased, levelling off at $1,087,844.
Then there was 50,432. That was the final number of entrants to this enormous competition, with 8,397 of them finishing in the money.
But numbers don’t really tell the full story. That would be left to the players, notably the final nine who, in the hours usually reserved for sleep, played down to a winner. In this case it was BRAYDEN93 of Mexico who, as Martin Harris reported for the Blog, overcame a volatile heads-up finale to take this most coveted of titles and a chopped first prize of $597,719.
The most money was reserved for kelly_koulis who despite being runner up got the better end of the seven-way deal, collecting $725,267. What’s even more remarkable was his back story. He qualified for the event in an $11 Deadline Turbo, a spin up of, well, a lot.
It was undoubtedly the story of the weekend, but then you could argue that’s relative. For tollgate might think the story was his triumph in the Sunday Warm-Up, worth a nice looking $87,000 (equal to ninth in the Sunday Million), which you can read about here. Then again the same goes for every winner this weekend, with details of those listed below.
Sunday Million 9th Anniversary
Entrants: 50,432
Prize pool: $10,086,400.00
Places paid: 8,397
1. BRAYDEN93 (Mexico) $597,719.60*
2. kelly_koulis (Greece) $725,267.11*
3. tiltinha (Brazil) $567,978.95*
4. PSMozak (Bulgaria) $542,539.85*
5. Rodrigo “sonmonedas” Pérez (Argentina) $413,610.60*
6. salaliitto (Israel) $394,207.12*
7. ModzillaPL (Canada) $336,550.72*
8. bari_nikolov (Bulgaria) $119,523.84
9. Kokli_1 (Czech Republic) $87,247.36
* reflects the results of a seven-way deal that left $100,000 in play for the winner
PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up
Entrants: 3,494
Prize pool: $698,800.00
Places paid: 540
1. tollgate (Australia) *$87,000.00
2. dasman13 (Netherlands) *$80,000.00
3. Bigdaft (United Kingdom) *$82,123.37
4. syvers007 (Norway) $40,181.00
5. Lockerl71 (Austria) $29,699.00
6. dr_upswing90 (Germany) $22,711.00
7. magularo (Austria) $15,723.00
8. mathaaaa (Brazil) $8,735.00
9. pudikkkkk (Russia) $5,590.40
* denotes three-way deal
There was plenty more action to fill the weekend, with wins for ImaLucSac and OhRaisyDaisy, as well as Kittymstar in the Women’s Sunday. Full results from all the weekend’s headline events can be found at the link below.
Full tournament results on PokerStars for the weekend March 14-15, 2015
For now however the weekend, or what’s left of it, belongs to Sunday Million winner BRAYDEN93. Congratulations to everyone who won events this weekend, or who cashed in the biggest event we’ve seen around here for a while. An 800,000 ante. Imagine.
Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.
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