PokerStars Sunday Million Won By Highway51

PokerStars’ flagship tournament the ‘Sunday Million’ managed to attract an impressive field of 9,687 players on March 14th, all willing to fork out the $215 buy-in for a chance of taking home a slice of the $1.5 million guarantee prize pool.
By the time the tournament got underway at 3:30 pm CST, the prize pool had reached $1,937,400 with 1,440 players guarenteed to at least have their entry fees covered.
Team PokerStars were once again well represented in the competition and after five hours  Daniel Negreanu and Jason Mercier had reached positions one and two on the leaderboard. An hour or so later Negreanu had crashed spectacularly out of the tournament and explained all in his blog, where he commented: “Out in 137th. Lost JJ to 88 AQ to 99 then K10 to 66. And there ya go :-)”
Jason Mercier fared somewhat better and finished in 76th place, while team mate Mike “Timex” McDonald had a deep run eventually finishing in 22nd position.
Nine hours into the Sunday Million, the bubble drew ever closer with just two tables remaining, and it would be a further hour before the final table was set after Gindependent exited the competition in tenth ($9,687), having gone all-in with pocket J’s but running into jfyjfy6 holding the pocket rockets.
The final table action got underway with the blinds at 250,000/500,000 and a 50,000 ante, but it wasn’t until over half an hour later that we had our first casualty when Klauss8s exited in ninth ($13,174.32), having pushed from the button holding pocket 2’s but was called by Highway51 holding pocket 5’s.
Next out was Snort3eva in eighth ($19,374) after going all-in for his remaining chips with Ah 5h only to be called by the Ad Kh. Soon after SingleFileD  was eliminated in seventh ($38,748) after his pocket K’s were bested by Soltari84 with Ah 10d, which turned into a full house.
Sixth place and $58,122 went to jfyjfy6 who pushed his pocket 6’s from the small blind and was called by popimaiorca on the big blind holding Ac 7d, while fifth place ($77,496) went to THE CUBE, whose Ad Jh went up against Highway51’s pocket rockets.
After rakeinfools was eliminated in fourth for $96,870, the remaining three players were unable to agree a split deal and before long a short stacked Soltari84 pushed with As 3d but was knocked out in third ($139,492.80) by Highway51 holding Qd Js, who made a straight after the flop fell Tc Kc 9s.
Highway51 with 51,836,592 in chips then had a slight advantage over popimaiorca with 45,033,408, but the definitive hand came on the second hand of the heads-up exchange after Highway51 was dealt pocket rockets to his opponents Kd Qd. With the flop falling 7h Ad Qs and then a Ks hitting on the turn to make popimaiorca two pair, all the chips flew into the centre of the table with Highway51’s made set holding its ground to knock popimaiorca out in 2nd for a $197,614.80 pay-day.
Highway51, however, earned himself a whopping $271,241.22 for his first place victory, as well as receiving the honour of taking down such a prestigious tournament.