Michael Schneider, a 22-year old student from the University of Minnesota, won the PartyPoker Million this weekend, making him the youngest winner of this prestigious tournament in history.
Schneider follows in the footsteps of poker greats Kathy Liebert, Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren and Michael Gracz, who won the limit holdem tourney in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 respectively.
The PartyPoker million is sponsored by PartyGaming as it's name suggests. The inaugural event in 2002 and the publicity that preceded it was highly influential in propelling PartyPoker to the top of the online poker market. Paradise Poker was the market leader at the time, but that changed quickly, partly due to the astonishing success of the PartyPoker Million tournament.
Most of the players that participated in the PartyPoker Million this year qualified online through the PartyPoker website for very modest buy-ins in satellite tournaments.
That doesn't make it any easier to win the tourney. Just look at some of the names of players that won the event in the last four years: Kathy Liebert, Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren. All highly respected poker players with an excellent track record when it comes to winning tournaments.
This year was not different. Many high profile professional poker players attended the event, including Barry Greenstein, Chip Jett, Barry Schulman and Gavin Smith.
The most experienced player at the final table was Kenna James, a well-known professional poker player from California. But being the most experienced is no guarantee to win a poker tournament as James was soon to find out.
A 22-year-old journalism student from the University of Minnesota by the name of Michael Schneider had demonstrated a lethal combination of patience, logic, math and observation skills throughout the tournament.
With only two players left at the table the 22-year-old Schneider had James outchipped by almost a factor six. In the final hand the short-stacked James had to go all in with J6 unsuited. Schneider called with QT unsuited. The flop gave Schneider top pair and James didn't improve his hand at the turn nor the river. Schneider is the new PartyPoker Million champion.
It wasn't luck that brought 22-year-old Michael Schneider his victory. To win the PartyPoker Million you should have some serious poker skills. Schneider has a very promising poker career ahead of him, and we have no doubts that we'll hear a lot more from him in the future.