PokerStars has increased the guarantee of the Sunday Million for the second time in two weeks. The flagship event of the platform will now come with a guaranteed prize pool of $2.5 million.

Traffic increases during the shutdown

Shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in increased traffic on the PokerStars website. The cash game traffic has increased significantly in the recent week. In the middle of March, a poker room had an average of 7,000 cash game players. Now, the seven-day average has gone up to 14,000 players. That is why the platform found it worthwhile to increase the total prize pool for its April 12 event.

The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired people to stay home and self-isolate because of which they are unable to visit real casinos and poker rooms. That void is now being filled by their online counterparts. Note that PokerStars upped the prize pool to $2 million on April 5 and increased it again today. This is the first time that the prize pool has gone beyond $1 million since the platform introduced the minimum buy-ins of $109. The two-day event generated a $3.135 million prize pool and drew 31,356 entries. This weekend, the tournament will have to draw at least 25,000 entries to avoid overlays. The April 12 event will also be a two-day event like April 5.

An important event for online gamblers

Sunday Million is one of the most important weekly online events which started on March 5, 2006. The first prize of $173,843 went to a user named “aaaaaaaa”. The tournament originally supported a buy-in of $215 but reduced it to $109 in January last year. It did not change the guarantee of $1 million. The upcoming $2.5 million guarantees is the largest ever since Black Friday eleven years ago. To date, PokerStars has organized over 600 Sunday Millions with 16 players winning the event twice in its 14-year history.

The largest pool prize of the event’s history came in March 2020 on the $215 PokerStars Sunday Million 14^th Anniversary tournament. The event witnessed 93,016 entries and generated a total prize pool of over $18.6 million, beating the guarantee by over $6 million. This was also the third-largest prize pool in the history of online poker.