Winner Collects a Cool $1M for Winning 17th Sunday Million Anniversary Tournament at PokerStars

For many, when we think about football, Brazil springs to mind. Or, the other way round – when we think of Brazil, one of our first thoughts is of the nation’s passion for football. We can be forgiven if poker isn’t in our list of games associated with Brazil but, after the recent 17^th Sunday Million Anniversary event at PokerStars that might change. This is because HALF of the top eight finishers hailed from Brazil(!), including the eventual winner, who collected a cool $1,000,000 for his impressive achievement.

It’s a testament to real money online poker that a single online poker tournament can comfortably handle a $7,500,000 guarantee and generate 39,500 entries! In fact, this boosted the eventual overall prize pool to $7,900,000, and thus a number of players managed to win life-changing sums of money. Moreover, given that satellites started as low as $1.10, a lot of players will have seen their bankrolls grow considerably after the dust settled…

After three gruelling days of hard-fought poker, nine players had the enviable experience of reaching a final table that featured the four Brazilians plus one player each from the other side of the globe, namely Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Austria.

A total of 5927 places made the money, with the top 10 being as follows:

1. RFN1986 (Brazil) $1,000,000
2. roflcopter88 (Denmark) $723,474.66
3. PAX176 (Poland) $519,001.44
4. songoks (Lithuania) $372,317.79
5. dariepoker Romania) $267,090.72
6. atredezini (Brazil) $191,603.34
7. paulinhoo00 (Brazil) $137,450.76
8. Sufferring102 (Brazil) $98,603.07
9. young_diam18 (Austria) $70,734.66
10. DefBeat976 (Hungary) $50,742.60

Deal or No Deal?

It’s become a common occurrence nowadays for the last few remaining players at a final table to strike a financial deal and then play for glory and maybe a nominal remainder of the prize pool, but the final two protagonists – RFN1986 and roflcopter88 – in this megabucks event elected to slog it out when the heads-up phase arose.

Brazil’s Ricardo “RFN1986” Nagamoto emerged victorious and won $1M to go with the prestigious title, but the Denmark-based roflcopter88 nevertheless walked away with a massive $723,474 prize. Note that the runner-up’s route to their dream payout is a great advert for how online poker really is universally accessible regardless of bankroll size – this particular quest started with roflcopter88 initially entering the tournament via a $20 satellite and then re-entering using a ticket won from a Bounty Builder Series “Road to Sunday Million 17^th Anniversary” Side Event that cost only $11! PokerStars deserve praise for making such affordable and flexible qualification routes to high buy-in ($215 for the Sunday Million) big money tournaments. Fourth placed songoks of Lithuania also earned their seat in a $20 satellite, turning that modest investment into a payout of over $372,000.

Scott Goodall, Poker Commercial Director at PokerStars “… We wanted to make the 17^th edition of Sunday Million Anniversary accessible to our whole community, offering multiple qualification routes and opportunities. This ultimately resulted in some great stories with several of the final table players turning low satellite buy-ins into huge prizes.”

So, an iconic event proved a great success, and even if you tend to favour Texas Hold’em and Omaha cash or Sit & Go games over tournaments, it’s worth adding the nosebleed prize pool events at PokerStars to your poker ‘to do’ list!  

Meanwhile, check out the latest online poker bonuses and offers in our regularly updated info section.

Good luck at the tables, and have fun!

Winner Collects a Cool $1M for Winning 17th Sunday Million Anniversary Tournament at PokerStars

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