Champ gained entry via $0.25 satellite

Brazilian poker player “AAAArthur” won the PokerStars Sunday Million 14th Anniversary edition this week, earning a whopping $1,192,802 paycheck. The original first prize was $1,509,390.01, but AAAArthur agreed to lock up a lower payday after the final four players made a deal.

AAAArthur gained entry into the $215 14th Anniversary Sunday Million for just 25 cents

AAAArthur clinched the title – $50,000 was still on the table after the deal – when “CrAzY_sTeFaN” moved all-in pre-flop with pocket 5’s and AAAArthur had pocket 2’s. The flop produced J-J-2, giving AAAArthur a full house. Neither the turn nor river helped CrAzY_sTeFaN and AAAArthur was a millionaire.

The champ’s previous largest online cash was just $90. AAAArthur gained entry into the $215 14th Anniversary Sunday Million for just 25 cents. He paid that price to enter a satellite which got him into a $4 satellite, which, in turn, won him a seat into an $11 satellite. It was from that qualifier that he finally got into the Sunday Million.

Largest prize pool ever for a PokerStars tournament

According to PokerStars, this tournament had the largest prize pool in the site’s history. With 93,016 entries – that’s 60,898 unique entries and 32,118 re-entries – the total prize pool came out to $18,602,300, easily beating the guarantee of $12,500,000.

The only two online poker tournament prize pools that have topped the 14th Anniversary Sunday Million’s are the 2018 partypoker MILLIONS Online ($21,835,000) and the 2019 partypoker MILLIONS Online ($21,090,000). Those events, however, had buy-ins of $5,300 and $10,300, respectively.

Sunday Million facts and figures

The Sunday Million is PokerStars’ flagship weekly tournament. The $215 event debuted on March 5, 2006, and quickly became a draw for players around the world on poker’s busiest day of the week. The somewhat appropriately named “aaaaaaaa” won that first Sunday Million for $173,843.

There have been well over 600 Sunday Millions since then. Until now, the largest prize pool for a Sunday Million was for the tournament on December 18, 2011, when 62,116 entries generated a prize pool of $12,432,200. While not a Sunday Million anniversary, that tournament was given a boost by being part of PokerStars’ 10th Anniversary celebration.

The buy-in was reduced to $109 in January 2019, though the $1,000,000 guarantee remained, and was increased back to $215 for last year’s anniversary edition.

one player, Artem “veeea” Vezhenkov, has won it three times

Perhaps unbelievably, there have been players who have won the Sunday Million more than once. The first to accomplish the feat was Jesper “KipsterDK” Hougaard, who won his second Sunday Million in May 2009.

Fifteen others have become repeat champions, but one player, Artem “veeea” Vezhenkov, has won it three times. He first did it in November 2015, joined the two-win club in July 2017, and then became the first to nab a third Sunday Million title in October 2018.