In 2012, Russian poker player Marat ‘maratik’ Sharafutdinov inadvertently created an internet meme while negotiating a final table deal during the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event. As the remaining players discussed how much money each player should get, the chip leader typed the sentence “I wont million” in the chat box, making him an instant online poker sensation. He went on to win the event, turning 40 Frequent Player Points into over a million dollars. Yesterday, his fellow Russian accomplished a very similar feat.
Defying extremely long odds, player “sss66666” won a million dollars in PokerStars’ special $1 Million Spin & Go promotion. The promotion was original part of the December Festival, but was extended throughout the entire month of January, as nobody had hit the jackpot yet. For the promo, PokerStars created special $5 Spin & Go tables that work the same as any other Spin & go except that the prize pool multipliers for the two highest tiers have been greatly increased. The second highest tier sees the prize pool set at 1,200 times the buy-in, but it is the top tier that is the attention grabber: 240,000 times the buy-in. Thus, with the extra 20 percent added to be split between the second and third place finishers, the winner of the richest possible Spin & Go gets $1 million.
To briefly recap how Spin & Go’s work, they are three-handed, hyper-turbo Sit-and-Go tourneys. The catch is that the players do not know what the prize pool will be until the game starts, at which point one of eight possible prize pools randomly determined and revealed. The majority of the time, it will just be twice the buy-in, but it can escalate to four, six, ten times and higher. For the bottom five prize pool tiers, it is winner take all, but for the top three, PokerStars adds 20 percent to give to the losers while the winner grabs 100 percent of the regular prize pool.
Statistically speaking, the chances of playing for the million dollars are practically non-existent. The 240,000 times buy-in tier is programmed to be spun just three out of 10 million times, for a probability of 0.00003 percent. Round it off and you’re looking at zero.
But yesterday, three players, including sss66666 sat down, bought in for $5, and likely had their jaws hit the floor when the spinner landed on 240,000x. They were all going to grab a spectacular payday – at least $100,000 for just a $5 investment – but they all wanted the million. It came down to sss6666 and geldduvel for the big prize. Leading by just a few chips, sss66666 was content to see the flop for cheap holding A♣-8♥ and had to have been thrilled to see it come down A♠-8♠-9♠, though nervous because of the flush possibility. He check-raised his opponent and saw a turn of J♦. At that, he moved all-in and saw he had already clinched the hand, as geldduvel had A♦-5♥. The million bucks belonged to sss66666 and geldduvel had to logoff happy to be $100,000 richer.
The promotion is still going on through the rest of the month, so there is still time to win, if you believe the three in 10 million shot can come in twice.
