Updated on 22 Feb 26 by
Barry Carter
Poker Expert

Another huge poker markup debate rages on

We recap some stories you may have missed including a huge night for the Sunday Million and 'Bald Spraggy' hits the live felt.





Vibes offends the staking police

You may recall last year one of the big Twitter debates of the year was on the markup Phil Hellmuth charged for staking into a Turbo Bounty event at the WSOP. Well it's that time of year again folks, this time the staking police have come after popular YouTuber Johnnie Vibes. 

Vibes charged 1.38 markup on his staking package for the WSOP, despite being mostly a cash player with $66,000 in live cashes. It's common to see MTT professionals charge 1.2, so this seemed high enough for Shaun Deeb and Doug Polk to lead a charge against his package deal:

The staking scene is usually something you have a very strong opinion about or you don't, but pretty much everyone on American poker Twitter had an opinion about it over the weekend, so start with the accounts above if you want to see how it unfolded. It essentially came down to a free market vs ethics of misleading investment debate, much like the Hellmuth one from last year.

Huge return for the $215 Sunday Million

The numbers have been slowly decreasing since the buy-in was reduced (apart from the PKO event) so a one off return to the $215 price mark was always going to be interesting. 

However, because it also came with a $10 million guarantee, it was hard to tell what specifically caused last night's 13th Anniversary Sunday Million to attract a whopping 61,342 entries (45,929 uniques and 15,413 re-entries) - probably the guarantee with some help from the buy-in. It was very close to the biggest ever Sunday Million with 62,116 entries in 2011 (though that was a freezeout). 

980 players remain and will play down to a winner today, where the first prize is $1,000,061.44.

Bald Spraggy

Over in Reno it's the annual RunItUp event where stars of Twitch come to play with their fans. 

When you see unusual headgear, that usually means a lost prop bet, and this time it was Ben 'Spraggy' Spragg who lost a bet and was therefore subjected to wearing a bald wig, which came about following a meme created by one of his Twitch fans:

The biggest stream of the night

Amazingly despite it being one of the biggest nights of the year at PokerStars, Lex Veldhuis did not have the biggest poker Twitch stream of the night. That honour fell to gamer 'arthas' who was playing in the event, until this happened:

Where do you fall in the markup debate? Let us know in the comments:


Barry Carter
Poker Expert

Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, Poker Satellite Strategy, PKO Poker Strategy, Endgame Poker Strategy, GTO Poker Simplified, Mystery Bounty Poker Strategy and Beyond GTO. In 2025, he won the Global Poker Awards for Best Book and Twitter Personality of the Year.