Poker Stars Sunday Million - June 24, 2007
Even he can see the Sunday Million is a big deal (Credit: The Buggy Professor)
This weekend while some of us were out celebrating our birthdays and others were enjoying cookouts and other 'family-related' activities, the online poker world wasn't asleep. Oh no! At Poker Stars almost 1500 folks paid $1,000 to play in the special quarterly edition of the Sunday Million Tournament. This drove up the total prize pool to an impressive $1,482,000.
Obviously the depth of the prize pool attracted some well-known pros including Thayer "THAY3R" Rasmussen, Steven "SvZff" van Zadelhoff and Matt "mlagoo" LaGarde, each of whom made the final table. loooser17 had the chip lead going into the action with 3 million bad boys stacked at his seat. Faithless, the short stack, held onto the position and was the first to hit the rails about half an hour in.
SvZff then took a chance by pushing his remaining 1.2 mil chips with an A,Q. thenut21 called the all-in with A,J and spiked trip hooks on the flop. The turn was a blank and the ace on the river gave SvZff's opponent the unnecessary full house. Me-ouch!
As a direct result of that hand, SVZff went all-in again a few minutes later with his remaining pittance. His A,10 was in bad shape against thenut21's pocket queens and the pocket jacks of jeffbeesdat's pair o' jacks.
Spinvis was eliminated in seventh place after loooser17 made a queen-high straight on the river ... and apologized for it. Jeff Gray, aka jeffbeesdat, left the table about half an hour later when his trip sevens came up against the sevens full of eights of mrrain. He earned over $50,000 for his efforts.
At this point mrrain had a commanding chip lead and loooser17 was shown the door after moving all his remaining chips in with a Kd,8s. thenut21 called and flipped over a dominant Kc,9h. The board was a miss but the kicker played and that's all loooser17 wrote. He exited in fifth position with no less than $69,654 in cold, hard cash.
THAY3R was the short stack when play got four-handed and took a stand post-flop with pocket rockets. Unfortunately, mrrain had flopped an open-ended straight draw with his five of diamonds in the hole and called. The river brought him a six and ended THAY3R's pretty successful night.
With three players remaining, a chop was discussed, but no one could agree on the terms so they played on. mrrain lost a bundle with his pocket hooks and then took another big hit when an unsuccessful bluff against mlagoo brought him under 1 mil.
At this point, mrrain had no real choice but to go all-in -- the blinds were pretty hefty. He watched as the board paired his opponent's king. Of course the $111,000 plus will go a long way to soothing his wounds.
As heads-up play began, mlagoo and thenut21 talked chop again. The agreement was by the chips with $50,000 left for the first place finisher. However, mlagoo thought the proposal was "ridiculous" so they deal was abandoned...again. The final hand would take place fifteen minutes later, with mlagoo on the winning end.
Here are the final table results:
1) Matt “mlagoo” LaGarde - $315,517.80 2) thenut21 - $158,574 3) Jeff “mrrain” Banghart - $111,150 4) Thayer “THAY3R” Rasmussen - $88,179 5) loooser17 - $69,654 6) Jeff “jeffbeesdat” Gray - $52,611 7) Spinvis - $37,050 8) Steven “SvZff” van Zadelhoff - $22,971 9) faithless - $14,079