Huge Paydays for Winners of PokerStars $10 Million GTD and $500K GTD High Roller

Two huge online poker tournaments just concluded a couple hours ago on PokerStars, the world’s largest poker site. An astounding 62,116 players took part in the $215 buy-in $10 Million Guaranteed Sunday Million, creating a prize pool of over $12.4 million. For its part, the $10,300 $500K guaranteed High Roller event, contrary to this poker blogger’s prediction, also attracted plenty of runners, creating an almost $2 million prize pool.

$500,000 Guaranteed High Roller

A total of 187 players ponied up the $10,300 buy-in to play in this High Roller poker tournament online, which meant first-place prize money of just over $400,000. The event attracted some of poker’s biggest names, including Daniel Negreanu (who didn’t make the money) and 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Jonathan Duhamel (who finished in a respectable 15th place, good for $28,050 in prize money).

Altogether, it took just over 14 hours to complete the event, which was eventually won by “jcl87” of Australia. Out of the 187 players, only 27 made the money.

$10 Million Guaranteed Sunday Million

It took 15 hours of grueling poker play to whittle down the original field of 62,116 to just one winner. An incredible 7,682 players cashed, each for a minimum of about $521, not a bad take especially for those who earned their seat via satellite. The $12.4 million prize pool meant that almost everyone at the final table would be guaranteed a six-figure payday, with the top 2 making about $1 million and $2 million, respectively. When play got down to 6-handed, however, the remaining players negotiated a deal based on chip counts, with an extra $200,000 going to the eventual winner. Thus, the winners and payouts were as follows:

1. First-Eagle – $1,146,574.65
2. Unstoffable – $580,724.34
3. BLAABAR – $709,896.78
4. tunafish919 –     $627,317.26
5. Dimedroll – $995,996.85
6. SkunkDen – $758,986.42