The kickoff festival of Season II was the partypokerLIVE MILLIONS North America at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal, Canada. And what a way to kick off the season – with a $10 million guaranteed prize pool (CAD) Main Event that made poker history! For the first-time ever, three millionaires came out of a $5,000+300 buy-in poker tournament. “Congratulations” to those lucky three: Taylor Black ($1.4 million), Darryll Fish ($1.2 million) and Anthony Ruberto ($1 million).
The final three players each won at least C$1 million!
To say the least, it was an ambitious guarantee. (‘Thank you’ Rob Yong, the partypoker LIVE creator who puts up these incredible guarantees.) We needed 2,000 entries to make the $10 million guarantee and we came pretty close as the final total was 1,954, thus providing a $230,000 overlay for the players.
It takes many people to plan, prepare, and execute putting an event of this size. Certainly, a tip of the hat goes to partypoker LIVE President John Duthie and his staff for all their efforts with a shout out to Simon Trumper for his numerous contributions, including providing structures and a prize pool payout that nearly all the players seemed to love. Thanks also to partypoker for providing players opportunities to win online packages to partypoker LIVE events and most importantly, a very special “thank you” to the players for your support – both those who won or attempted to win online packages as well as those who travelled to Montreal on their own dime.
We also want to thank the Playground staff for doing such a terrific job hosting this amazing poker festival. As you probably know, I’m a huge fan of the Playground Poker Club. To paraphrase a line from the movie ‘The Hustler’ – “There’s no slot machines, no blackjack, no showgirls………….just poker, mister!” And believe me, at Playground, they do poker ‘magnifique’! “Merci beaucoups, Playground!”
Congrats also to the other event winners at the Season II kickoff festival:
A) $1,100 Open winner – Karim-Oliver Kamal ($210,000), B) $10,300 Hi-Roller winner – Daniel Eldridge ($300,000), C) $25,500 Super Hi-Roller winner – Christopher Kruk ($375,000), D) $10,000 Finale winner – Michael Sklenicka ($242,370) E) $1,100 Turbo winner – David Shao ($180,000) Well done, champs.
During the festival, many of us took a night off to go to a ‘wowing’ player’s party in Montreal. I’d like to tell you more about it but in copying Vegas’s slogan, we have an unwritten rule, “What happens at a partypokerLIVE players party, stays wherever that party/event is held.” To give you an idea, though, here are some party photo’s.
Even with the goings on listed above, the real buzz of the week was created by the BIG GAME (cash game – and I do mean BIG). Like everyone else, I was mesmerised watching this each night, especially the PLO game. After long days of playing, when I returned to my room, I would turn on my computer and literally, I couldn’t go to sleep every night until they turned the cameras off – just couldn’t stop watching. The primary players were Rob Yong, Leon Tsoukernik, Sam Trickett, ‘Aussie’ Matt Kirk, and The Wolf. The stakes ($2000/$4000/$8000 blinds) were mind-boggling! If you want to see non-stop, out of this world action, check out this game. Grab your popcorn and get comfortable, though, because if you’re like me, you’ll be glued to your seat. To see it, go to mypartypokerlive.com.
The partypoker LIVE tour is going to some amazing locations this year. Click here to see the upcoming schedule. I believe our MILLIONS Caribbean Poker Party (CPP) event at the luxurious Baha Mar resort in the Bahamas (Nov 9-18) will be THE vacation/poker festival of a lifetime! That’s right – the most amazing of all time! There are two, yes “two”, guaranteed prize pools of $10 million each at this festival ($5,000 and $25,000 buy-ins). To make these guarantees, I’m guessing at least 1,000 will need to win packages online. Hopefully, you’ll be one of those package winners! The beauty/luxury of Baha Mar is incredible. This is one you don’t want to miss.
You can win packages to these amazing tournaments, including the one at Baha Mar, in a variety of ways. Go to partypoker and click the partypoker LIVE section to win some PPL$$$. Accumulate money in your PPL$$$ account and you can use that money any way you want for any partypoker LIVE event, including entry fees, airfare, and hotel expenses. In addition, you can win FREE money! There is a PPL leaderboard and the top 100 players over this next year (April to April) will divide up $1,000,000! That’s right, $1 million to those on the leaderboard! Finish first on the leaderboard and you’ll get $100,000! If you finish 100th, you’ll get $5,000. Opportunity knocks. Check all this out on partypoker.
Great things just keep happening on partypoker. The new online POWERFEST Series (May 6-20) is the biggest guaranteed Series ever offered on partypoker ($40 million guaranteed including 13 events with $1 million+ guaranteed). And everywhere I go, players are talking about the upcoming MILLIONS Online in December featuring a $5,200 buy-in with a $20 million guaranteed prize pool – the largest ever event online!
Hope to see you online at Powerfest May 6-20 and/or at an upcoming partypokerLIVE festival!
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