First-Eagle Wins 10th Anniversary Sunday Million
December 19, 2011 3:14 pmCanadian online player ‘First-Eagle’ has won PokerStars’ 10th Anniversary Sunday Million, after defeating a field of 62,116 players to collect a first-place prize worth $1,146,575, after a deal was struck at the final table.
The $215 event marked PokerStars’ largest ever prize pool at $12,423,200 and six hours into the competition the bubble finally burst with 7,682 players guaranteed at least two and a half times their buy-in.
As the field continued to be whittled down, so too, was the vast number of PokerStars Team Pros, who had entered the tournament. In total, ten of them cashed in at the event, including Sigge “ClarkKent89” Reichard (7,166th), Gualter Salles (5,916th), Pius Heinz (4,338th), Johnny Lodden (4,202nd), Rino Mathis (4,081st), Matthias De Muelder (3,149th), Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen (2,377th), George Danzer (1,654th), Andre Akkari (798th) and Marcel Luske (129th).
By the 11th hour of the competition, just 100 players still remained, which then reached the final table of nine heading towards the 14th hour of play. The finalists lined-up as follows:
First-Eagle (112,989,366)
SkunkDen (99,077,631)
Dimedroll (95,849,710)
BLAABAR (92,750,827)
Unstoffable (88,211,413)
tunafish919 (56,325,060)
kaalen (30,046,742)
fireballdio (24,420,395)
yokouno1980 (21,488,856)
After the eliminations of yokouno1980 in 9th ($86,512), kaalen in 8th ($119,866) and fireballdia in 7th ($182,406), a six-way deal was discussed between the remaining finalists. It then took 35 minutes of hard negotiations before a deal was agreed with $200,000 still to play for the eventual winner.
By the time heads-up play was reached, First-Eagle held an 8 to 1 chip lead over Unstoffable, who by now may have regretted agreeing to the smallest share of the six-way deal. Unstoffable then doubled-up on his first hand only to be eliminated two hands later, after shoving his flush-draw on a Ts-8s-5d flop. Unfortunately for him, First-Eagle was holding the nut-flush draw (As-3s), and with no player hitting their hand, First-Eagle took first-place with ace high.
Here are the final pay-outs at PokerStars Sunday Million 10th Anniversary:
1. First-Eagle (Canada) $1,146,574
2. Unstoffable (Spain) $580,724
3. BLAABAR (Sweden) $709,896
4. tunafish919 (Australia) $627,317
5. Dimedroll (Russia) $995,996
6. SkunkDen (Australia) $758,986
7. fireballdia (Portugal) $182,406
8. kaalen (Sweden) $119,866
9. yokouno1980 (Israel) $86,512