You may or may not heard of this thing call the “PokerStars Players No Limit Hold’em Championship.” We’ve talked about it a few times this week. It’s this tournament PokerStars is running in the Bahamas right now. It has a buy-in of $25,000.
That’s a lot of money. So to get the ball rolling, PokerStars spent a year giving away a load of free tickets, called “Platinum Passes.” Willy Wonka-style.
Did you know that I was in the running to win one once?
I didn’t win though. Not bitter at all. Note my gracious round of applause here.
Instead, PokerStars instead invited me and my colleague Mike to come and see the action unfold. Which is almost exactly the same as playing in the $25,000 tournament itself, and is in no way like rubbing salt into the wound whatsoever.
Anyway, inviting 320 people to play in a high roller tournament turns out to be a pretty smart idea. What happens is then lots of other people who consider themselves pretty good at poker realize that they should also come and play because they may even have an edge against these people.
That resulted in some 750 more people flying in, having either bought in directly on their own dime, or grinding satellites to win their entry that way.
The end result is a tournament with a prize pool of over $26 million. That’s an absolutely ridiculous number which we have tried to put into context for you with graphs and everything.
Today is the big day. Eight people remain and they will be playing down to a winner. That winner is going to take home the PSPC trophy.
Where on earth would you put such a monstrosity, you ask? That’s a great question. Thankfully, the winner of the PSPC is also going to win $5.1 million which is a decent chunk of change. Certainly enough money to convert the loft or maybe the basement—turn it into a trophy room so you have somewhere to put it.
Something out of the way—you don’t want to be ostentatious. If you want to go that route, with $5.1 million you could buy a trophy house.
Anyway, we’re going to be rooting for two people today—Marc Rivera and Ramon Colillas, the two Platinum Pass winners of the eight to sit at the Final Table.
We have profiles on both of them to find out more:
We’ve been updating you on the proportion of Platinum Pass winners in the field each day of Dispatches: It started off at 31% of the 1039 to register and has maintained that proportion throughout. You might be able to do the math in your head, but just in case: 2 out of 8 Final Tablists is a 25% Platinum Pass representation.
It’s looking good for at least one to cash for seven figures (six of the eight will), and one could go all the way. It’s going to make a great story for PokerStars—neither player is a rank amateur, but they also do not have extensive experience on the live circuit and certainly not any in high rollers.
If one ships it, we could be looking at a Moneymaker-style story. That alone is worth sweating the livestream. It’s going to broadcast on a 40 minute delay, all cards shown. Watch on Twitch, PokerStars.TV or YouTube.
