It was just a few days ago that we reported on the beginning of PartyPoker’s biggest ever tournament. The MILLIONS Online event began last Sunday and, following its first two flights, has already surpassed the $10 million mark in prize money.
A total of 73 players managed to reach the second day of the MILLIONS tournament, including top-player Sam Trickett. The UK Number One All Time Live Tournament Money Earner came out on top during the event, walking away with $300,000 from playing Pot-Limit Omaha online. Joining him was the owner of Dusk Till Dawn, Rob Yong, who also scooped over $300k in winnings.
Yet, the plan for this tournament isn’t only the $10 million mark, but double that. And the reason? PartyPoker wants to make its main rival, PokerStars look extremely inferior.
PokerStars currently has the bosting power of hosting the ten largest online poker tournaments of all-time. At the moment, the record is held by the Sunday Million 10th Anniversary, which had a $215 buy-in and pulled in a total of 62,116 players in 2011. The prize money for that tournament stood at $12,423,200 altogether. This record is something that PartyPoker seems keen to smash out of the water.
And, potentially, it could manage it – judging by the way that the MILLIONS Online tournament has been proceeding so far.
MILLIONS More for PartyPoker
As a way of trying to knock the PokerStars record out of the way, PartyPoker set a $20 million guaranteed prize pool for the MILLIONS tournament. Now, that’s quite the hefty challenge to fulfil – for any online poker site.
In fact, the best result that PartyPoker has seen from online tournaments was in last year’s MILLIONS offering. This one saw a $1,027,000 first-place win by Jon “sordykrd” Van Fleet, who overcame a total of 1,047 other players to succeed. That’s why it seems like quite a challenge for PartyPoker to reach a $20 million mark. In fact, it seemed like the poker room should have tried for a $5-million less target.
Yet, things became very slightly clearer when the PartyPoker MD, Tom Waters stated that $15 million just “didn’t feel right”. The reason why it didn’t feel right is still a mystery, although the Day 1A results seem to be proving that the tournament is popular and successful so far. A total of 1,574 players entered the event, each of whom bought in for $5,000 to try and soar through the ranks.
Day 1B marked a total of 484 players entering, with the total number equalling out to 2,058 across both events. This does make it the second most-attended $5k online poker tournament in history.
Yet, this number isn’t what stands out to PartyPoker. Instead, the prize pool that has been generated so far is like a shining beacon. At current, this stands at $10,290,000. With four more flights of the tournament remaining to play – the first of which took place yesterday – PartyPoker is certainly on track towards hitting its $20 million mark.
