PokerStars guaranteeing $10 million for Sunday Million 10th anniversary tournament

(PRESS RELEASE) -- A special 10th anniversary edition of the Sunday Million has been announced today by PokerStars.com, an Amaya Inc. brand, featuring a $10 million guaranteed prize pool and at least $1 million for the winner.

The online tournament, which is set to be one of the richest online poker tournaments ever held, will take place at 2:30 p.m. ET (19:30 GMT/20:30 CET) on Sunday, March 20 with a buy-in of $215, and players will be allowed to re-enter up to three times (until late registration ends after three hours of play). Allowing players to re-enter enables PokerStars to offer such a large guaranteed prize pool, ensuring that this is one of the biggest online poker tournaments of 2016.

"The Sunday Million Anniversary tournament is one of the biggest events on the poker calendar," said Team PokerStars Pro Jaime Staples, who will be hosting a live Twitch stream of the tournament while playing. "And when you throw in a $10 million guaranteed prize pool and more than a thousand free seats as well, it's a tournament that every poker player should aspire to play."

Other Team PokerStars Pros confirmed to be playing include: Adrienne Rowsome, Andre Akkari, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Celina Lin, Chris Moneymaker, Felipe "Mojave" Ramos, Felix Schneiders, George Danzer, Grzegorz Mikielewicz, Jake Cody, Johnny Lodden, Jorge Limon, Kosei Ichinose, Liliya Novikova, Liv Boeree, Mickey Petersen, Naoya Kihara and Theo Jorgensen. Of those, Danzer, ElkY, Limon and Schneiders will be Twitch-streaming their play on their own channels.

FREEROLLS

Players can qualify for free to the tournament via weekly Hyper-Turbo Freerolls that will take place every Saturday between Feb. 13 and March 19 at 1:47 p.m. ET (18:47 GMT/19:47 CET). A total of 1,200 free entries to the Sunday Million 10th Anniversary tournament can be won across six freerolls (200 seats per freeroll). Players can get a ticket to each freeroll by making a real money deposit of $20 or more in each qualifying week using bonus code MILLIONFREE1, MILLIONFREE2 and so on until MILLIONFREE6.

SPECIAL SATELLITES

In addition to the freerolls, there will be two Deadline Satellites on the day of the tournament. An $11 Deadline Satellite at 1:45 p.m. ET will guarantee 1,000 seats, and a $33 Deadline Satellite at 2:05 p.m. ET will guarantee 333 seats.

There are also four VIP Bash satellites on consecutive Saturdays from Feb. 27 to March 19 at 3 p.m. ET. The buy-in is 1,000 StarsCoin, with PokerStars adding 50 Sunday Million 10th Anniversary seats to each of the first three Bash satellites, and 100 seats in the final Bash satellite on March 19.

Normal cash satellites will also be running around the clock featuring a wide variety of buy-ins that start from just $1. Those can be found by opening the client or app and going to Online Events > Sunday Majors > Cash Satellites.

SUNDAY MILLION HISTORY

The first ever Sunday Million took place on March 5, 2006. It featured 5,893 players, a total prize pool of $1,178,600, and was won by "aaaaaaaa" from Canada for $173,843.50.

The largest and richest Sunday Million took place during PokerStars' 10th Anniversary celebration in December 2011, when 62,116 players set a record online poker prize pool of $12,423,200 that stands to this day. That tournament was won by "First-Eagle" from Canada for $1,146,574.65.

Last year's Sunday Million 9th Anniversary tournament, which took place in March 2015, was won by "BRAYDEN93" from Mexico, who topped a field of 50,432 players to pocket $597,719.60 after a seven-handed deal was done at the final table. The total prize pool was $10,086,615.