PokerStars Sunday Million Smashes $12.5M Guarantee

The PokerStars Sunday Million is celebrating its 14th Anniversary with a massive special edition. PokerStars increase the buy-in from $109 to $215, but also the guarantee from $1 million to $12.5 million!

Everyone thought PokerStars had gone mad because the size of the guarantee meant at least 62,500 players needed to buy in or the site suffered a loss. More than 85,000 players bought in during Day 1 to dispel any fears of an overlay.

Late registration is open until 12:00 ET and the total attendance continues rising. Some 87,013 players have bought into this Sunday Million at the time of writing. This means the current prize pool weighs in at an incredible $17,402,600 and is increasing.

PokerStars Sunday Million End of Day 1 Top 10 Chip Counts

Place	Player	Country	Chips
1	nowwor880	China	680,117
2	X_QQ_AA_KK_fish	Belgium	643,093
3	DLSXL	Netherlands	576,980
4	GLiTCHy M-F	Sweden	565,242
5	flyflo	Germany	530,381
6	guiantonio2	Brazil	529,102
7	nakolene888	Bulgaria	513,879
8	IownYoUlolz	Austria	501,481
9	ChrizCrozz	Germany	499,343
10	CharlyBigPot	United Kingdom	486,795

China’s “nowwor880” is the player at the top of the chip counts at the end of Day 1. They finished with a 680,117 stack and have done their chances of glory no harm at all. There’s a long, long way to go before the champion is crowned, but that champion will win ~$1.5 million!

Belgium’s “X_QQ_AA_KK_fish” also enjoyed themselves in the Sunday Million Day 1. The Belgian ended the first stage of this monster-sized event with 643,093 chips.

Dozens of high profile grinders punched their Sunday Million Day 2 tickets. These included UK-based Spaniard Juan “Malaka$tyle” Pardo (243,417), and British stars Patrick “pads1161” Leonard (115,032) and Conor “1_conor_b_1” Beresford (97,661).

Others include Niklas “Lena900” Astedt, Alex “bigfox86” Foxen and Benjamin “bencb789” Rolle.

Day 2 continues at 12:05 ET and continues until the 50th level is reached. Levels reduce to 15-minutes levels as the special edition Sunday Million draws closer to crowning its champion.

It’s Not Only The PokerStars Sunday Million That’s Booming

The ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is one of the reasons the Sunday Million smashed its ambitious guarantee. Thousands of poker players are isolating, either voluntarily or enforced by their governments, and want to continue playing poker.

Online poker is the next best thing for these players with casinos and poker rooms around the world being closed.

partypoker is running its POWERFEST series right now and is enjoying an influx of players. Almost every event has surpassed its guarantee, including the $1M Gtd Phased event that paid out $1,342,535. “LittleRussia” won that tournament for a massive $267,164 payout.

PokerStars and partypoker are off-limits to you in the United States, but there’s an uplift in traffic across sites servicing American online poker players.

Bovada is displaying a banner highlighting it’s business as usual in regards to online poker. Reports show cash game and tournament traffic is higher than this time last week.

Likewise, Americas Cardroom has a seven-day average of 1,700 cash game players playing simultaneously. Tracking site PokerScout logged 2,151 online players as a peak yesterday.

Take Advantage of the Lack of Sports

Although Americans can’t compete in the massive PokerStars Sunday Million, there’s value to be had. Sports betting is almost non-existent around the world right now because of the COVID-19 virus. This means online poker and online casino products are the only way for sites to generate income. In turn, this leads to increased competition for you custom.

Don’t be surprised to discover online poker sites offering many more bonuses than usual as they try to attract you to their site. Sites such as Bovada, SportsBetting, and BetOnline are usually more focussed on sports. Not any more.

Furthermore, expect cash games and tournaments to be softer than ever. Why? Because sports bettors have nothing to gamble on so turned to online poker. Also, live poker players tend to be lesser skilled than their online counterparts. Discussions on that matter are on their way to uspokersites.us so stay tuned.

Matthew Pitt

If it’s something you can play online for real money, chances are Matthew knows a bit about it. He’s been writing about slots, craps and poker for the better part of the last decade. He’s written for PokerNews, PartyPoker and many other respected online gambling websites during the last nine years.

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