PokerStars.com, the world's largest online poker room, celebrated the first anniversary of its Sunday Million(tm) Tournament with a record-shattering $2 million online poker tournament. The $200 buy-in event attracted 10,508 players, the largest pool of players ever to play in a cash poker tournament of any kind.
The Sunday tournament at PokerStars has been a tradition for poker players since 2003, when the site inaugurated the event with a $100,000 guarantee. The pool has grown dramatically over the years, and in February 2006 PokerStars became the first card room of any kind to offer a $1 million guaranteed no-limit Texas hold'em tournament every week. Players either bought in for $200 (plus $15 entry fee) or won their entries in one of many weekly Sunday Million satellites offered by PokerStars.com for just a few dollars.
The top five players in this historic event each finished the tournament with winnings of more $100,000. Of the lucky five, three were from Europe, with winning player ``Zeddor'' coming from Denmark, who walked away with $131,971.
Over the past year, PokerStars has paid out more than $64 million in Sunday Million winnings. The Sunday Million has remained the unchallenged biggest weekly tournament, roughly three times larger than any other comparable online tournament and more than 20 times the size of comparable live play tournaments.
Sunday's event was the largest online prize pool after the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker(tm) (WCOOP), the largest poker tournament series ever held online. The fifth annual WCOOP boasted 18 events and an overall prize pool of more than $18,500,000, with a main event prize pool of over $6 million.
``The Sunday Million has become an online institution for millions of poker player around the world,'' said Lee Jones, PokerStars Poker Room Manager. ``This is an incredible milestone for poker, for the Internet and for one very skilled player from Denmark. He is a real champion.''