The top 5 landmark online MTTs
Following a very successful Sunday Million last week, we look at five of the most iconic tournaments in online poker history so far.
2010 WCOOP Main Event
The World Championship of Online Poker really is the online version of the World Series of Poker, and the Main Event has produced some amazing stories over the years.
Special mention has to go to the 2012 event where Russian player 'maratik' did the online version of the Moneymaker effect, when he turned an FPP satellite win into a seven-figure payday.
However, the biggest WCOOP Main Event was in 2010 when Tyson 'POKERPOTTER' Marks defeated a field of 2,443 to win $2,278,097.50, the biggest single online MTT prize in poker history.
This was the last WCOOP Main Event before Black Friday, leaving one to assume that we potentially could have one day had a bigger WCOOP Main Event if the Americans were still part of the field.
PokerStars 10th Anniversary Sunday Million
Last week boasted a whopping 55,059 entries in the Sunday Million, but that wasn't the biggest one ever.
That honour was decided on December 18, 2011, when 62,116 players entered the Sunday Million, a special event celebrating 10 years of PokerStars.
'First-Eagle' of Canada was the lucky player who took down the biggest ever prize in a Sunday Million, an impressive $1,146,574.65.
This was particularly impressive as it came less than six months after Black Friday, and as such featured no American players, who previously were the majority of this flagship tournament's field.
Common Cents Kickoff
Whenever you hear people claim that poker is dead, you really need to direct them towards some of the jaw dropping fields that poker still attracts.
PokerStars has several times broken the record for largest ever tournament, including several 'Guinness World Record' events where money was added to the prize pool to purposely break the record.
Amazingly though, they broke their own record without even deliberately planning to do so. Last October they hosted the Common Cent Kickoff, a tournament with $100,000 added and a single cent buy-in. This managed to host 253,698 players, which broke the previous record of 225,000.
When talking about small buy-in events with big prizes, special mention also has to go to the $11 Sunday Storm Anniversary in April 2012, which attracted 136,443 players and saw 'Ironic13' win $166,575.68.
WCOOP High Roller
At the other end of the spectrum last year the WCOOP had an event with just 46 entries, but it was a landmark event all the same.
This was the first ever bonafide Super High Roller for online poker. While the Super High Roller scene is thriving in live poker, this was the first truly huge online buy-in, of $51,000.
The eventual winner was high stakes cash pro Ben Tollerene, who pocketed $616,518.34 after a three-way deal.
The online bracelet event
The only event in the list not to take place on PokerStars took place last year at the WSOP online site, and it once again showed the gap between online and live poker is almost non-existent these days.
It's not uncommon to have hybrid live and online events. Paradise Poker had such an event many years ago, the International Stadiums Poker Tour had online day ones and lots of live events in the UK also have online day ones.
However, none of them end with a World Series of Poker bracelet. Last year the $1,000 buy-in Event #64 took place online, but paused at six players, at which point the final table continued live inside the Rio.
Anthony Spinella defeated a field of 905 to win $197,743. The event was very popular and will be repeated again this year.
Did we miss a classic online tournament? Let us know in the comments.
