The regular weekend, big-money tournaments continued to flourish
this week with the organizing online poker rooms all meeting their
participation targets, thus ensuring that the guaranteed prize pools
were reached.
In the Poker Stars.com $1 Million Guaranteed weekly event this popular
site (it's the second biggest on the Internet) welcomed a little shy
of 6 000 hot-to-trot pokerheads, easily overtaking their guaranteed
$1 million in prizes. One of the longest running of all the regular
big prize tournaments the competition developed plenty of action as
the contestants were whittled down to a final table with solid rewards.
The final results looked like this:
CardXFactor (a Californian from Stockton) won the event and took home
$158 889. Second spot and a cheque for $72 997 went to a Danish player
using the online 'handle' N00Z and the rest of the table were all
in the five figure bracket with even the tail-end Charlie collecting
$10 657.80. Players hailed mainly from the USA, but Canada, Venezuela,
Denmark and even Estonia were represented.
Full Tilt Poker's $400 000 Guaranteed was the last in the Full Tilt
Online Poker Series (FTOPS) and delivered all the action that players
anticipated. 1 468 players paid the $500+$35 entry fee and pushed
the prize pool to $734 000, almost double the guarantee.
With a mixture of players from all over the world the play was intense
and exciting, leading to a final table and some heavy wagering before
player 'Phatigue' triumphed and snared the $161 480 top prize. 'Crownginger'
pulled in $70 427 for second place and even the first player eliminated
from the final, 'Timkrank' picked up $11 010.
Over at the Party Poker Sunday Million Guaranteed, the entries, at
5 232 were lower than those achieved at rival Poker Stars but nevertheless
pushed the guaranteed prize pool well ahead of the base number. The
winner, 'da_icestro' from Philadelphia in the States was paid $162
192 for his trouble after a heads up with second placed 'andrewkole'
whose paycheck was a hefty $88 525.