PokerStars, for all its warts this year, is certainly trying to end 2014 with a bang. During the entire month of December, the world’s largest poker room is running a number of promotions for its December Festival in which it will give out more than $15 million prizes. Here is the run-down
$5 Million Guaranteed Knockout Week
Currently in progress, the $5 Million Guaranteed Knockout Week is exactly what it sounds like: a series of Knockout tournaments with a total of $5 million in guaranteed prize money. In Knockout tournaments, a portion of the prize pool goes towards the regular prize payouts, while the rest is used for a bounty on each player’s head. When someone is eliminated, the player that knocked them out gets the bounty. There are also Progressive Knockout tournaments this week, which work the same way, except that every time someone is eliminated, the player who provided the knockout blow has their own bounty increased.
There are five knockout tournaments associated with this promotion each day except on Sunday, which will feature seven.
$1 Million Spin & Go
By now, we all know what Spin & Go’s are: three-handed hyper-turbo Sit-and-Go’s in which players start with just 500 chips. Through December 30th, PokerStars is adding a special $5 buy-in tier (buy-ins are normally $1, $3, $7, $15, or $30) that gives players a chance to win huge. The odds are tiny, just 3 in 10,000,000, but the top prize for these special Spin & Go’s is $1 million, with $100,000 going to second and third place if the jackpot hits. The second-highest prize tier has been boosted, too, with a buy-in multiplier of 1,200 rather than the standard 240, the prize pool $6,000 and first place $5,000. The rest of the prize tiers are the same as usual.
Zoom & Boom
Running December 15 through December 21, anyone who wins a hand post-flop after being dealt two red Aces can win a cash prize of 50 times the big blind at that table. Players must immediately upload the winning hand to the BOOM! Hand Replayer to be eligible for a prize. The most anyone can win in a day is $50; if a player uploads more than one eligible hand in a day, the most lucrative one counts.
Double Vision Sunday
All Sunday majors – Sunday Kickoff, Sunday Warm-Up, Sunday Storm, and Sunday Million – will run twice on December 21, with one six-handed and one nine-handed version of each.
$5 Million Guaranteed Sunday Million
Pretty straight-forward, the Sunday Million on December 28 will have a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million with $500,000 guaranteed to go to the winner.
One promotion this month has already finished: $1 Million Milestone Hands. This was very much like PokerStars’ typical milestone hand promos. For every millionth hand dealt, PokerStars gave the players at the table that hit the big hand extra cash. On the 300th milestone hand, the cash prize was multiplied ten times. Additionally, a minimum of $250,000 was divided amongst all players at tables that were identical to the one where the 300th milestone hand was hit at the exact same time it was hit.
