Big Payoffs for Halloween Players

While little kids went door to door, and in every corner of the world some of the most recognizable live players went head to head, thousands of money hungry poker amateurs pursued their “treats” online. Despite the holiday and several major live events this weekend, the online tournament numbers were still impressive.

Several of the smaller poker rooms attempted to pad their attendance with Halloween-themed bonuses and freerolls while larger sites like UB held special Halloween qualifiers for their usual big Sunday guaranteeds. Most notably up for grabs this weekend was PokerStars’ handful of cash-heavy events: the Sunday Warm-Up, the Sunday Million, the Sunday Second Chance and the Sunday 500. Also on the schedule was UB’s aforementioned $200K Guaranteed and Full Tilt’s $750K Guaranteed, Sunday Brawl and Sunday Mulligan.

Unfortunately, there are no heated exchanges or virtual fuels to rehash, as most of the top players seemed to be feeling pretty friendly on Halloween. A number of these large events ended with a deal, including both of the larger PokerStars events, Full Tilt’s $750K and UB’s $200K.

Zareta was a dominant force in the biggest tournament of the day, the PokerStars Sunday Million, and used that momentum to ride all the way to the top of a massive field of 8.523 players. After several hours of action, though, the two final players – Zareta and marado86 – must have been feeling pretty soft as they concocted a deal that guaranteed them both at least $200,000.

The Sunday Warm-Up had a similar story, though it was the top three that decided they’d share their candy. It turned out to be an especially good deal for third place finisher Moritz “Catenaccio” Kranich who finished third but actually claimed a larger cash than second place finisher kavindaaa. First place finisher Levan1971 still had the third fattest first place finish of the day with his $118,860.69 payoff.

Over at Full Tilt’s $750K, chickface and eyes7475 also went the way of a deal with an agreement that guaranteed them both at least $100,000. Chickface ended up in first for $120,160.61 while eyes7475 pocketed an even $106,000. The biggest winner not to ink a deal was Full Tilt’s Sunday Brawl champion monkeybudgie whose balls earned him a $106,737.40 payout. Turning a MasterCard deposit into such high sums seems more and more prevalent these days, as folks take a chance at the giant prize pools tournaments.

All but the UB $200K boasted numbers of well over a thousand though only the Sunday Million drew over 5,000. And while the action was good, let’s hope – for the sake of the audience, at least – that heads-up deals aren’t becoming the new standard.

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