It was the 8th Anniversary of the $215 Sunday Millions of PokerStars on 2nd March 2014 and the mega online poker giant didn’t leave any stone unturned to meet up its $8 Million guarantee. From mega satellites to deposit codes to step wise freerolls, PokerStars churned up the complete repertoire to meet the numbers. In the end, the party was a good one with 46586 in attendance creating a prize pool of $9,317,200, the biggest ever for the Sunday Million since its inception. The final man standing was DrUPSWING who took home a fat pay check of $1,038,500.

The satellites started from $0.88 +R, $1.65+R, $4.44+R which satiated the small poker pocket to the bigger SNG’s guaranteeing seats for $44, $88 etc. There were also bonus code offerings floated around by PokerStars where in a player needed to deposit $100 in their account to get a ticket to the $11 satellite to the big Milly. The whole event was being advertised as a ‘ticket from $1 to $1 Million’ considering the buy-ins for satellites were so small and the first prize so big.

While each Sunday this popular showcase tourney sees traffics of around 8000 players, this event saw five times the traffic with many benefiting from the small satellites running every hour of every day since a month. This author itself also qualified through a $1.65 +R satellite and finished 22/23 to get a seat to the 8th anniversary Sunday Million.

In the end, the event that kicked off at 0100 India time and has 180 minutes of late registration saw players rolling in and out till 0400. Then on things slowed down a bit and then extremely slow when the money bubble burst at 5997th place. The tourney formed its final table after a taxing 13 hours of play but then on the grind became too much and players started getting eliminated early. An Asian poker player in the form of missoon of South Korea was the unfortunate FT bubble. Early eliminations within minutes formed pads1161(9th place), uninc157(8th place), pinkfinger in 7th place, tempOr2k in 6th place and kukoc69 in 5th place.

At this time, players were discussing a deal when the break happened. cynfarAA was the one to initiate the discussion when the final 4 remained. the tourney was paused and a deal proposal was send. DrUPSWING who was the biggest stack with more than 280,000,000 chips would get $1,091,629 and $160,000 was reserved for first place. hdjgkfkgsdl who was little less than 98,000,000 chips reserved $625,098 and cynfarAA got $548,563 while the smallest stack of MRJ1111 would get $419,171. But hdjgkfkgsdl didn’t agree and the tourney went on.

When MRJ1111 got eliminated in 4th place, the deal was again discussed but didn’t come through. Play resumed again and cynfarAA as expected exit in 3rd place. Heads up action ensued with DRUpswing holding double the chips. the players finally struck a deal when hdjgkfkgsdl had secured two double ups and thus got an equal money deal with $160,000 reserved for the winner. In the end it took the of Drupswing to defeat the as the latter hit an awesome full house with

Amongst Indian poker players, a generic search of the top 2500 ITM finishes in the PokerStars gave out the following stats:

PSUStudent finished in 635th place for $931

bhindicutter finished in 1099th place for $838

harnand finished in 2087th place for $652

The final table payouts of the PokerStars 8th Anniversary Sunday Million are: