Man wins Lamborghini after PokerStars Sunday Million
10 Mar 2011
A massive field of 59,128 players paid the $215 to play the anniversary event on Sunday, creating a guarantee-defying prize pool of $11,825,600. Of that field, 7,450 players finished in the money.
With so much at stake, and having come so far, the nine players who reached the final table opted to chop the prize money. The tournament’s eventual winner, after 14 ½ hours play, was Luke “Bdbeatslayer” Vrabel, from West Hartford, Connecticut, who took home $671,093.81 – his share of the chop – along with the Lamborghini.
“I play a lot on PokerStars,” said Vrabel, “but the year leading up to this win has not been that successful for me – I feel spectacular!”
Runner-up was Sheppyshape, from the UK, who collected $465,647.02, while third-placed wrzr123 took the biggest share, collecting $844,209.87.
The field shattered multiple records, including beating the previous best field in the PokerStars.com Sunday Million (36,170), which was set during last year’s fourth anniversary event, won by RichieRichZH who earned $1.1 million.
The fifth anniversary event stands as the second largest online prize pool ever, second only to the 2010 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event, which, with a buy-in of $5,200, amassed $12,150,000.
Team PokerStars Pros were also among those finishing in the money. Best of them was Gualter Salles (84th place) while behind him was Humberto Brenes (144th), Angel Guillen (515th), Sandra Naujoks (736th), Team Online's Diego "vgreen22" Brunelli (825th), Toni Judet (1,003rd), Team Online's Kristian "CharismA3" Martin (1,343rd), Raymond Wu (2,192nd), Jason Mercier (3,282nd), Noah "Exclusive" Boeken (3,606th), Anh Van Nguyen (3,651st), Team Online's Shane "shaniac" Schleger (5,399th), Jude "j.thaddeus" Ainsworth (6,653rd), Pat Pezzin (7,086th) and Liv Boeree (7,244th).
To read the full report of this remarkable event, go to the PokerStars Blog.