- Event proves a hit, exceeding guarantee by 66% and become the largest of the year outside COOPs and anniversary editions.
- Storm and Warn-up, also half-priced, were also very successful on Sunday.
- Day 2 of the Sunday Million plays today, with the top two players guaranteed more than $100,000.
PokerStars’ special half-priced Sunday Million, the first ever with a buy-in of just $54.50, attracted 33,000 entries to build a prize pool of $1.67 million, the highest of the year.
Half Price Sunday is a regular promotion that PokerStars has run one or twice a year for the last eight years. As the name would suggest, during the special promotional weekend, the Sunday Million, along with a couple of companion Sunday events, have a buy-in of half the usual size, while the guarantee stays the same.
Traditionally, this means the $215 buy-in tournament has a buy-in around the $100 mark for the promotional weekend. However, PokerStars made a permanent change to its Sunday Million in early 2019, changing the buy-in to $109. This means that for the half-priced Sunday Million this time around, it saw its buy-in cut once again, to just $54.50.
This makes it the cheapest ever Sunday Million in history. $50 of the buy-in goes towards the prize pool (the remainder is the operator’s fee), meaning that PokerStars needed to get 20,000 entries to cover the prize pool.
The lower buy-in proved very popular with players. In total, 23,793 players entered the tournament. Along with 9,524 re-entries (as is now normal, up to three re-entries are permitted), it resulted in a prize pool of $1,665,850. exceeding the seven-figure guarantee by 67%.
This is enough to set a 2019 record for the highest prize pool in a Sunday Million, excluding special events during WCOOP, SCOOP and the Anniversary Sunday Million.
