PokerStars Sunday Million: the largest online tournament

Largest?

PokerStars is the largest online poker room (by a margin), and not surprisingly they host the largest regular online poker tournaments (by a margin).

So the largest weekly tourney is the so-called Sunday Million. They named it this way because it has a one million dollar guarantee.

Or rather had, because at the time of writing the guarantee has been raised to one and a half million dollar, and it may even reach $2 million one day.

The Pokerstars Sunday Million is deservingly the highlight of the weekend online poker tournament activity. Some pro or semi pro players work (so to speak) mostly during the weekend as this is when the large tourneys take place. There are many during weekdays too, but not the big ones.

So the online poker aficionados gather during weekend and multi-table the top tourneys played at pokerstars, full tilt poker, UB & AP, Bodog, plus partypoker, titan poker & everest poker for non US players. As each of these rooms has a few large tournaments, the players may multi-table up to 8 or 10 tourneys at a time.

But the biggest money in large weekend tournaments can be found at PokerStars. Note that there is no pokerstars rakeback, but they have a VIP club that offers the same rewards if not more, than a rakeback program.

PokerStars Sunday Million Payout

So PokerStars offers a $1.5 million guarantee for the Sunday Million. The money pool generated from the buy-ins sometimes surpasses this amount, but not always in which case pokerstars has to put an overlay.

To take an example of a Sunday Million that took place at the end of 2009, there were 7515 players who each forked the $200+$15 buy-in fee, bringing a total money pool of $1,503,000.

But only the top 1080 places paid a prize, starting at $315.63 for the players finishing between 991st and 1080th. The payout rose progressively up to the last three players who just missed the final table. They got a cool $8,255.50 for their effort.

But like in all online poker tournaments, and the Sunday Million is no exception, the real money is made at the final table.

So the final nine players got paid as follows:

• 1st: $225,450.00
• 2nd: $165,886.11
• 3rd: $120,240.00
• 4th: $79,659.00
• 5th: $61,623.00
• 6th: $46,593.00
• 7th: $32,314.50
• 8th: $18,036.00
• 9th: $11,648.25

A rather nice payout for the lucky nine who reached the Pokerstars Sunday Million final table.

PokerStars Sunday Million: more details

PokerStars runs satellite tournaments to the Sunday Million all week way. So you do not have to invest $215 and you can get a chance to take home the big money for just a few bucks. Either if you qualify via a satellite or with a buy-in of $215, you can walk away with a huge payday every Sunday.

You have found the biggest weekly poker tourney on the Internet. You can also watch the Sunday Million with the Online Poker Show on PokerStars.tv. Every week the show features the highlights of the Sunday Million, with poker expert commentaries from Nick Wealthall and David Tuckman.

The PokerStars Sunday Million runs at 16:30 (ET) every Sunday. There are two other large payout tournaments on Sunday at pokerstars.

The Sunday Second Chance starts every Sunday at 18:30 (ET). With a buy-in of $215, this event has a guaranteed prize pool of $250,000. Also the Sunday Warm-Up is a $215 tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $750,000, starting every Sunday at 12:45 (ET).

Whatever your experience and your bankroll, there are non stop tournaments in all sizes at the largest online poker room, so you should try pokerstars.

On March 6th 2011, pokerstars celebrated the Sunday Million 5th anniversary. 59,128 players participated, which broke a world record for online poker tournaments. And the winner was guaranteed $1,655,629.38 plus a $200,000 Lamborghini Gallardo. Not bad for one day work.

Use Pokerstars marketing code PSP8181 to get the maximum 100% bonus up to $600 when you sign up at pokerstars.