Two of the best No-Limit Hold'em players in the world, Cates (who plays on PokerStars under the alias w00ki3z) and Tollerene (who plays as Ben86) round out the 8-man field led by Isaac Haxton and Phil Galfond.

Also in the field announced yesterday are Alex 'Kanu7' Millar, Benjamin 'Sauce123' Sulsky, Tobias 'KTPOKP' Kuder and Alexander 'Sussie Smith' Roumeliotis.

Isildur1 Inspired

The inaugural All-Star Showdown is set to kick off tomorrow on PokerStars at 6 pm CET (noon ET) and will play out similar to the now-defunct Isildur1 SuperStar Showdown.

Action will be across four heads-up tables at once. Each player starts with 1,000 big blinds and play will go until one player is broke.

Isildur 2.0

 

If the 3,000-hand threshold is reached, the blinds will double and play will continue.

Buy-in is $100,000 apiece and over $500k will go to the winner.

Match-ups and schedule are as follows:

Semi-finals

Finals

Haxton, Galfond Marquee Names But No Soft Spots

Ben "Ben86" Tollerene

 

While newly minted PokerStars Team Online pro Haxton and high-stakes legend Galfond may be the most familiar names, none of the participants is a slouch by any means.

Cates may be the next most notabls as he earned his rep battling Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Viktor "Isildur1" Blom at the nosebleed stakes on the old Full Tilt Poker as Jungleman12.

One of the biggest winners ever online, Cates reportedly ran his FTP bankroll up to $6 million before Black Friday.

Tollerene and Sulsky are also very familiar names to online railbirds as they consistently step up against the biggest names in the nosebleed games.

Millar is a heads-up crusher who battled Isildur in the Superstar Showown and Russian Roumeliotis has several notable heads-up scores to his credit.

Kuder is the most unknown of the group but can usually be seen battling at the highest-stakes on PokerStars as well.

Fans looking to rail the action can find it via the All-Star Showdown banner in the PokerStars lobby.

One fan who has a vested interest in the matches? Renowned poker agitator Tony G., who has his money behind Cates:

Let's see how @junglemandan gets on - got a big piece of him in 100k this weekend

The promotion will run from Oct. 27-Nov. 11 with $450k expected to be awarded over the course of the mini-series.

Oktoberfest has always been one of the biggest events on PKR Poker and this year the $100k-guaranteed PKR Masters will be rolled into the festival.

In addition PKR will offer three different leaderboards based on buy-in levels with various cash prizes up for grabs.

At the end of the series the top two leaders in each category will be entered into a $3,000 freeroll for a seat in WPT Ireland.

As a bonus players can also get into Oktoberfest Event 11 Deep & Steep for nothing if they buy 45 virtual beers with player points anytime between today and Oct. 31.

For more information check our PKR review or visit the PKR website for the complete Oktoberfest schedule.

Here are the highlights of the promotion:

Battling Alex "Kanu7" Millar in an epic quarterfinal that took up most of the day yesterday, Haxton had to come back from a major deficit to move forward in his debut event as a Team PokerStars Online pro.

Haxton said in advance of the match he expected a long one and he was right as Millar matched him move for move for most of the day.

Haxton surged to an early $60k lead by around hand 1,000 but by hand 2,000 Millar had taken a similar lead.

When they reached 3,000 hands the blinds were doubled, as per Showdown rules, and Haxton had whittled Kanu7's lead down to about $40k.

Bigger and bigger pots changed hands over the next couple of hours as Haxton cut into Millar's lead before taking control late and surging to the victory in hand 3,881.

All told the two battled for over 17 hours and agreed the match could have gone either way:

Haxton Meets Sulsky in Semis; Cates, Galfond On Deck

Now that Haxton has advanced he'll have to switch his attention to Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, his opponent in the next round.

Mr. Sweets.

 

Sulsky had a much quicker go of it in his quarterfinal on Saturday, leading Tobias "KTPOKP" Kuder wire to wire and busting him in less than six hours.

Four more heavy hitters are still to hit the tables this week on the other side of the bracket including high-stakes heroes Dan Cates and Phil Galfond.

Action picks up again on Tuesday with the remainder of the schedule as follows:

Semi-finals

Finals

For a full recap of all the action over the weekend, check the PokerStars blog.

The eight-person heads-up event has a $100k buy-in with action over four tables at once.

The ultimate winner will take home over $500k. More info on the structure of the challenge here.

The Super XL Series will be played November 17-25 and consists of 88 No-Limit Holdem tournaments (and one Omaha event) with buy-ins ranging from $11 up to $1,050 in the Highroller Event.

A total of $2 million in prize money will be guaranteed in the series.

Some of the highlights on the Super XL Series of Tournaments schedule:

Daily satellites to the Super XL Series tournaments, with buy-ins starting at only 8¢, are already available in the 888poker lobby.

Sign up to play plus be eligible for our exclusive $888 bonus and monthly freerolls here.

The new Full Tilt Poker has relaunched its slightly revamped website and is officially open for play-money play - a week ahead of its scheduled real-money relaunch.

Players outside of the United States can now log-in to check balances, player points and dabble in the play-money games as well as change their password.

Deposits and withdrawals are still unavailable until Nov. 6, as are player-to-player transfers.

US players are also still unable to access their accounts and will be until at least that date.

A note in the client informs US players to access FullTiltPoker.net at that point, although they will still be unable to withdraw funds until a process has been established with the US Department of Justice.

Players in regulated markets such as France and Spain can log-in and use the play-money tables but real-money play will not be available until a proper license has been arranged in each country.

UPDATE: Players in regulated markets (except for Italy) can now access and withdraw balances via the account-pairing function with their PokerStars accounts. See FullTiltPoker.com for details.

Gus: Now the main man.

 

Hansen Front and Center, Promotions Plentiful

Among the more notable change players will see is the push for Gus Hansen as the new face of FTP along with Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Viktor "Isildur1" Blom.

Also prominent is the new Deal Me in promotion set for Nov. 6-11 with $250k in added freerolls.

Full Tilt Poker Room Manager Shyam Markus has also started a thread on 2+2 with answers to several FAQs and a list of new features to look out for.

Among the more notable are:

More info on the impending Full Tilt relaunch here.

The two Vancouver-based pros had a friendly-but-swingy battle over 4,341 hands -- the longest quarterfinal yet -- that saw both players pushed to the brink.

Tollerene, one of the best heads-up players online, stormed out to the early lead and had Galfond down to just $20k of his original $100k buy-in in the first 1,000 hands.

A break for lunch shortly after – where the two actually met at a local restaurant along with fellow pro Jason Koon– seemed to settle Galfond down.

When play resumed, Galfond slowly began his climb back out of the hole he built. By hand 3,158 Galfond had the lead back and expanded it to $75k by the time they hit 4,000.

Galfond grinded out a win over the next two hours but attributed it as much to running good as his own effort:

gg @bttech86.I think I was outplayed at the end but managed to run good in the big pots.#AllStarShowdown

Final Four Begins Friday w/ Haxton vs. Sulsky

Haxton: Carrying the PStars flag.

 

Galfond will now face Dan “w00ki3z.” Cates in the semi-finals this Saturday.

Cates, who most know from his Jungleman12 days on Full Tilt Poker, advanced on Tuesday with a quarterfinal win against Alexander “Sussie Smith” Roumeliotis.

Team PokerStars Online pro Isaac Haxton and Ben “sauce123” Sulsky will meet up in the other semi-final on Friday.

Semi-finals:

Finals

For a full recap of all the action yesterday, check the PokerStars blog.

The specially designed heads-up tournament showcasin Haxton has a $100k buy-in with players battling over four tables at once.

Winner takes home over $500k. More info on the structure of the challenge here.

Prior to October, Sahamies had been mired in a losing streak that had him down nearly $1 million since this summer.

Suffice to say that losing streak is no more and Sahamies is looking to finish the year with at least a $764k profit.

Some of the other big winners in October included 1II|1II|1iI|, Ben “Ben86” Tollerene and RaiseOnce while patpatman, Kanu7 and Fake Love888 all went into the red on PokerStars.

Here’s a closer look at the biggest high stakes action from the past month.

RaiseOnce?

 

Top 10 Biggest Online Winners in October

Ilari Sahamies was the biggest winner in October but that didn’t stop 1II|1II|1iI|, commonly referred to as Barcode, from winning $1.1 million.

Barcode’s impressive month included winning $500k in a single day. Poker fans have yet to discover the identity of Barcode although the account is registered in Canada.

Meanwhile Ben “Ben86” Tollerene posted another successful month that included $616k in profit. Tollerene is now the second biggest winner of the year $2.4 million in profit.

The other Ben – Ben “Sauce123” Sulsky – is the biggest winner of the year with just over $3 million in profit.

RaiseOnce, the rumored account of Phil Ivey, also had a solid month, winning a total of $430k.

Here’s a complete look at the top 10 biggest winners this month according to hsdb.com:

1. Ilari FIN: +$1,603,0832. 1II|1II|1iI|: +$1,191,239 3. LewisFriend: +$763,615 4. Ben86: +$616,330 5. GVOZDIKA55: +$595,352 6. RaiseOnce: +$430,112 7. KTPOKP: +$406,722 8. Skjervoy: +$342,977 9. mikki696: +$340,828 10. Harrington10: +$327,896

Phil Galfond

 

Top 10 Biggest Online Losers in October

No one felt the wrath of Ilari Sahamies in the month of October quite like patpatman.

Patpatman, who is rumored to be one of the famous Malaysian businessmen, lost over $1 million in the last 30 days.

It’s been a disastrous year for the patpatman account. Patpatman started by winning nearly $1 million in the early stages of 2012 but then nosedived to -$2.4 million.

At this point it’s going to be very tough for patpatman to salvage anything from 2012 on PokerStars.

On the flip side, at least patpatman wasn’t alone in the loser’s column this month as skilled players Kanu7, Fake Love888 and Phil “MrSweets28” Galfond all lost hundreds of thousands.

Kanu7 was the second-biggest loser as he dropped $559k while Fake Love888, allegedly Patrik Antonius, dumped $465k.

Finally Galfond lost a total of $397k in October. Despite the loss, Galfond remains one of the biggest winners this year with $1.5k in profit. He's also in the semi-finals of the All-Star Showdown against Dan "jungleman12" Cates.

Here’s a complete look at the top 10 biggest losers this month according to hsdb.com:

1. patpatman: -$1,113,321 2. Kanu7: -$559,149 3. Zypherin: -$530,689 4. Capoch: -$472,255 5. Terken89: -$469,490 6. Fake Love888: -$465,781 7. Joiso: -$458,748 8. MrSweets28: -$397,084 9. JoeIngram1: -$289,184 10. PepperoniF: -$272,861

The PokerListings Turbo PCA Satellite takes place at 12:30 ET on Nov. 4 with a $1,000 guaranteed prizepool.

For every $10 in the prizepool, PokerStars will chip in a ticket to the bigger $10 satellite where 10 packages to the 2013 PCA are guaranteed, each one worth $16k.

Last year 43-year-old poker amateur John Dibella outlasted a field of 1,072 players and beat a tough final table that included online stars Kyle Julius and Faraz Jaka to win the 2012 PCA for $1.7 million.

The 2013 PCA is set to once again take place at the glamorous Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas from Jan. 5-14, 2013.

It’s the 10th anniversary of the massive poker tournament series so PokerStars will be running a variety of special events to celebrate.

The 10-cent satellite is open to any players who signed up to PokerStars.com through PokerListings. The promo is not open to players in regulated markets such as Italy or Spain.

Here’s all the information on the PokerListings PCA satellite:

Name: PokerListings PCA satellite

Date: 04/11/2012

Time: 12:30 ET

Structure: Turbo

Buy-in: $0.09+0.01

Guarantee (seats in target): 100

Password: pl3q7pca

Max players: 1,000

For more information check our PokerStars review.

Known as one of the best heads-up No-Limit Hold’em players in the world, Cates did little to dissuade that notion as he bullied the talented Sulsky over four tables for most of the match.

Taking roughly 10 hours and just over 3,000 hands, it wasn't quite a walkover but the final didn’t end up being quite as closely contested as some of the other matches in the eight-man series.

Cates was up almost $200,000 after about 1,000 hands and never let up, keeping the aggression on and taking creative lines that kept Sulsky on the back foot.

Sulsky made a brief comeback around the end of the eighth hour to keep it interesting, but Cates kept his foot on the gas and pulled away again shortly after.

As the inaugural All Star Showdown winner, Cates earns heads-up bragging rights over seven of the best players in the game.

He also takes home $550,000 – although a chunk of that will return to the hands of backer Tony G.

Sulsky earned $250,000 for his runner-up finish plus the undying respect of countless railbirds for his impressive play over his three matches.

Almost two full days of poker but no money to show for it.

 

Sulsky Outlasts Haxton, Cates Rolls Galfond

Also played over the weekend were the semi-final matches with Sulsky and Cates taking diametrically opposite routes to the final.

Sulsky matched up with Isaac Haxton in his semi-final and the two evenly matched pros played like it, battling back and forth over an epic 19 hours and 4,200 hands before Sulsky prevailed.

Cates on the other hand got himself into a $100k hole against Phil Galfond early in his match but stormed back over the last 1,500 hands to win fairly handily.

Galfond and Haxton, perhaps the two most marquee names in the event, wetn home empty-handed despite their performances in reaching the semi-final round.

For full recaps of all the matches in the eight-player challenge, check the PokerStars blog.

For an outline of the Challenge set-up and recaps of the quarter-finals, click here.

Grab a seat with Cates at his next live event - the PokerListings.com Battle of Malta.

As part of Double Vision Sunday both the Sunday Million and Sunday Warm-Up ran twice meaning grinders had access to over $4 million in prizepools in just those four tournaments.

Here’s a complete breakdown of the biggest tournaments that were held online yesterday:

Ana Marquez

 

PokerStars Sunday Million

The first Sunday Million held on Sunday was also the biggest with 8,027 players creating a massive $1.6-million prizepool.

A total of 1,170 players were paid in the tournament including Team PokerStars Pros Jose Barbero, Pius Heinz, Fatima de Melo and Victor Ramdin.

Ana Marquez, who recently finished second in a WSOP event, was the last Team Pro standing as she finished 125th for $1,204.

Russian Akademnuk entered the final table as one of the shortest stacks but wasted no time immediately doubling up through the chip leader.

Akademnuk would eventually take the chip lead into heads-up play against German opponent Kabira. The pair quickly settled on a two-way deal before the heads-up match began.

In the end Akademnuk won a tournament-deciding coinflip with Ace-Jack over Kabira’s pocket fives.

Here are the complete final-table payouts (*reflects two-way deal):

Dag Palovic

 

PokerStars Sunday Million II

Brazilian Joao M. outlasted 5,957 players to win the Sunday Million II for $147,233 yesterday.

The second Sunday Million of the day attracted Team PokerStars Pros Liv Boeree, Ana Marquez, Bryan Huang, Fatima De Melo, Martin Staszko and Dag Palovic.

Joao M. entered the final table as the chip leader and dominated all the way to heads-up play where he was tied with wesko78.

The deadlock didn’t last long as Joao M. won the very first hand they played for 14.5 million chips.

In the final hand of the tournament Joao M. flopped trips with Jack-Eight and then rivered quads to easily win both the pot and the tournament.

Here’s a complete look at the final-table payouts (*reflects six-way deal):

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up

East Coast grinder Chris “Run dat Game” Lovett smashed his way through a 3,284-player field to win $95k in the Sunday Warm-Up.

Shane Schleger

 

The first Sunday Warm-Up of the day drew numerous Team PokerStars Pros including Lex Veldhuis, Humberto Brenes, Vicky Coren, Angel Guillen, Jose Barbero and Shane Schleger.

Lovett entered the final table as the chip leader with 9 million chips and true to his online name he ran the game.

Lovett was still leading the final table but decided to make deal with three players left. Lovett got the most but there was still $10,000 for the eventual winner.

In the final hand of the tournament Lovett flopped middle-set to bust Elmagico19A1 in second place.

Here’s a look at the final-table payouts (*reflects three-way deal):

Martin Staszko

 

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up II

The second Sunday Warm-Up of the day actually proved to be bigger than the first with 3,871 players creating a $774,200 prizepool.

Online player $kill Game, who made some notable scores during the last WCOOP, would win the tournament for $114k.

Jonathan Duhamel, Andre Akkari, Maxim Lykov, Johnny Lodden and Mickey Petersen all played the tournament but 2011 WSOP Main Event runner-up Martin Staszko was the last Team PokerStars Pro standing when he finished 30th.

$kill game entered the final table second-to-last in chips but it didn’t matter as he put on a clinic on his way to the first place finish.

Here’s a complete look at the final-table payouts (*reflects two-way deal):

The site officially re-launched with real-money games at 7 a.m. ET Tuesday morning and at the time this article was published there were over 40,000 players on the site.

The site is available to most countries outside the U.S. (although Italy, France and Spain are notable exceptions) and players can now withdraw funds if they choose to.

Among the 40,000 players on the site at launch were Full Tilt Professionals Gus Hansen and Viktor "Isildur1" Blom.

"The return of Full Tilt Poker fills a hole in the community that's been felt by millions of players," said Hansen. "A lot of people have been waiting for this day to come and now that it's here we can all look towards a brighter future."

It’s been a bizarre journey for the former second-biggest poker site in the world.

Since Black Friday, Full Tilt had its license pulled by the Alderney Gaming Commission, was accused of being a Ponzi scheme by the DOJ and failed to complete a deal with the Bernard Tapie group.

Finally PokerStars officially announced it had settled with the DOJ and would take over the Full Tilt Poker assets as part of the deal this summer.

Gus Hansen is back on Full Tilt.

 

$250,000 in Freerolls Available to Players on Full Tilt

"Full Tilt Poker is back and better than ever," said Sarne Lightman, Head of Marketing for FTP.

"We are bringing back to the players everything they loved about the site and we invite them to help us celebrate by joining our 'Deal Me In' launch promotions."

As part of the Deal Me In promos Full Tilt Poker is offering $200 in bonus cash to each player and $250,000 in freerolls.

Although players in Italy, Spain, Denmark, Estonia and Belgium cannot currently play on Full Tilt Poker, they can withdraw their funds on the site.

U.S. players, on the other hand, will have to wait a bit longer as the U.S. Department of Justice is handling their account balances and have been essentially silent since the PokerStars deal was announced this summer.

Running from Nov. 17-25, 2012, the Super XL series will include nearly 100 events culminating with a $500,000-guaranteed Main Event on Nov. 25.

The Super XL event represents the biggest tournament series that 888poker has ever run.

Buy-ins in the series range from $35 to $1,050 for high roller tournaments. There will also be a number of poker variants including 6-Max, Turbo, Deep Stack and Pot-Limit Omaha.

Check the 888poker website to see the complete Super XL schedule.

888poker has a comprehensive satellite schedule where players can qualify for Super XL events for as little as 8¢.

In addition the site is currently running a Super Welcome Bonus where each player’s first deposit is quadrupled up to $300. That means players who deposit $20 will play with $80 on the site.

The Super Welcome Bonus is valid in most countries from now until Dec. 5.

To sign-up for 888poker and be eligible for our exclusive freerolls on the site click here.

Starting Nov. 12, Party Poker will be awarding $16,000 packages to the 2013 Aussie Millions every week in a special $640+$40 buy-in tournament. The site will award one package for every 25 players in each event.

It’s possible to satellite into the 2013 Aussie Millions for absolutely nothing thanks to a diverse qualifying schedule on Party Poker that starts with daily freerolls.

Beyond freerolls, Party Poker offers daily feeder satellites at $2, $8 and $74 buy-in levels.

Every Party Poker $16,000 package to the 2013 Aussie Millions includes:

The Aussie Millions is one of the most prestigious tournaments in the world and the biggest tournament in the Southern Hemisphere.

Last year local Oliver Speidel outlasted a field of 659 players to win a first-place prize of $1.6 million.

Party Poker is also currently running its Accelerator promo all of November, which awards prizes based on the amount of Party Points a player generates. It takes just five Party Points to be entered into an iPad giveaway.

You can sign up for Party Poker and gain access to exclusive PokerListings freerolls by clicking here.

Blom, and fellow member of The Professionals, Gus Hansen, were among the first players on Full Tilt Poker after the site re-launched on Tuesday.

It didn’t take long for former FTP regulars Rui Cao, Alex “IReadYrSoul” Miller, Alex Luneau and Ronny “ronny37617” Kaiser to join in the action.

It was shades of Isildur1 in 2009 as Blom quickly jumped out to nearly $300k in profit, becoming the biggest winner on the site.

Unfortunately for Blom, he started losing towards the end of the week and by the time Friday rolled around his profit had been diminished to $87k.

He’s still faring better than Hansen, who is currently the biggest loser on Full Tilt since the re-launch with $387k in damage.

Ilari "Ilari FIN" Sahamies

 

Sahamies Goes on Catastrophic $672k Losing Streak

It’s been a wild few weeks for Ilari Sahamies and this week was no exception as the Finnish cash-game pro lost $672k in the high-stakes games on PokerStars.

It was a stark contrast for Sahamies as he won $1.1 million in the previous week.

This week Sahamies recorded close to 3,000 hands, many against upstart account patpatman.

Patpatman is rumored to belong to one of the Malaysian businessman famous for their high-stakes games in Macau. The account was the biggest winner in online poker this week taking down a total of $680k.

Initially down $1 million earlier in the week, Sahamies recovered somewhat in the last few days and managed to win back $328k.

Knowing Sahamies he could very well win another $1 million this coming week and if he's looking for a big game, he knows where to find it:

anyone looking for action?

It was a busy day of action on PokerStars as Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen also nearly made the final table of the Sunday Warm-Up.

Here’s a closer look at how the three biggest online tournaments played out yesterday:

PokerStars Sunday 500

Belgian Kenny “SpaceyFCB” Hallaert outlasted 815 players to win the elite PokerStars Sunday 500 for $63,528 yesterday.

Hallaert already had an impressive tournament resume that included a win in the Sunday Warm-Up for $107k. Hallaert also has final-table appearances on the European Poker Tour and the Masters Classic in Amsterdam.

The Sunday 500 was a challenge in its own right with displaced American pro Amit Makhija trying to make some noise. Makhija ended up going out in fifth place for $20k.

Some of the other notables to go deep included Tim “blumenkind53” Ulrich (17th), Grayson “gray31” Ramage (26th) and Sami “Lrslzk” Kelopuro (28th).

Hallaert beat Canadian pistons87 heads-up to claim the Sunday 500 title.

Here’s a complete look at the final-table payouts:

Ana Marquez

 

PokerStars Sunday Million

Team PokerStars Pro Ana Marquez made a deep run in this week’s Sunday Million before finally hitting the rail in 15th place for $5,855.

Marquez was one of 7,055 players to play this week’s Sunday Million including fellow Team PokerStars Pros Johnny Lodden, Liv Boeree, George Danzer, Lex Veldhuis and Andre Akkari.

It appeared Marquez was headed for a final table but was derailed when she got short-stacked with 15 players left. Marquez finally made her move with ace-five only to have an opponent call with pocket queens.

The board offered no help to the Spanish poker pro and she finished painfully short of the final table.

Instead online player Royal Jiks took a massive 19,908,121-chip lead into the final table. Royal Jiks got coolered mid-way through the final table and left with only 2.5 big blinds.

Royal Jiks performed a miraculous comeback, however, and eventually beat AleksHNL heads-up to claim the $180,504 first-place prize.

Here are the complete payouts for the final table (*reflects five-way deal):

Mickey "mement_mori" Petersen

 

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up

Irish online player allintrev23 mowed down a 3,512-player field to take top honors in this week’s Sunday Warm-Up for $110,277.

There were plenty of PokerStars pros on hand for the event including Max Lykov, Vicky Coren, Pius Heinz, Nacho Barbero, George Lind and Martin Hruby but the majority were eliminated well before the cash.

Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen didn’t fall so easily, however. The Danish pro went on impressive run that saw him make the final two tables.

Petersen finally finished in 14th place to take down $3,160. Petersen has had a number of close calls over the last few months but is still gunning for that big online title this year.

Meanwhile allintrev23 entered the final table as one of the middle stacks but played well enough to secure a spot heads-up against moumaife84.

Allintrev23 was at a slight chip advantage going into heads-up play but it didn’t end up mattering as he won a massive coin flip with pocket fives against moumaife84’s ace-seven. With just three big blinds left, moumaife84 was eliminated shortly thereafter.

Here’s a complete look at the final-table payouts:

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The series will run from Nov. 15-25 and offer 100 events of low-buy-in tournaments ranging from 11¢ to $22, with guaranteed prizepools of up to $1 million for the Main Event (with a minimum of $150,000 for first place).

MicroMillions III starts at 10 a.m. ET tomorrow with an action-packed 11¢ rebuy tournament with a $10,000 guarantee.

Here’s a look at some of the highlight events over the course of the series:

PokerStars will also offer a 2013 PCA package to the player who finishes on top of the MicroMillions III leaderboard.

Players who make 2-10 will get tickets into the TCOOP Main Event and players 11-100 get TCOOP $109 tickets.

If you really want to hedge your bets, PokerStars also offers a complete schedule of satellites into the MicroMillions III for even less than the already low buy-ins.

Players who sign up for PokerStars through PokerListings receive a 100% deposit match up to $600.

In addition PL.com players on PokerStars currently have access to an exclusive PCA promo where the winner walks away with a $700 ticket into a PCA satellite. For more information check the PokerStars review.

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Koon’s victory headlined a day that saw no less than five six-figure scores on PokerStars with both Melanie “Callisto 5” Weisner and Amit “AMAK316” Makhija making big final tables.

While multi-way chops decided both the Sunday Warm-Up and Sunday 500, Koon politely turned down his heads-up opponent’s offer of a deal and went on to win the whole shebang.

Keep reading for highlights from the weekend’s three biggest Sunday majors.

Koon Snags $110k in Sunday Warm-Up Win

American Jason “jakoon1985” Koon prevailed over a field of 3,499 yesterday to take down the $215 Sunday Warm-Up, pocketing $109,869.

This online win comes on the heels of a massive 2012 for Koon, one that included over half a million dollars in live tournament wins.

This week’s Warm-Up featured a $699,800 prize pool and had room in the money for the top 540 players.

Koon entered the final table third in chips but by the time the field was whittled down to three, Koon had built a commanding lead with 22.9 million to jurata_PL’s 8.8 million and sneker’s 3.3 million.

Koon briefly lost that lead, however, before knocking out sneker by winning a preflop all-in with Q♥ J♥ against pocket sevens.

Koon held a roughly 2.4 to 1 chip lead going into the heads-up match and managed to close out the tournament in short order.

Jurata_PL flopped top and bottom pair with 9-2 but was run down on fourth street when Koon turned aces up.

Also cashing in this tournament was Ana Marquez (44th), Richard Toth (47th), Alex Kravchenko (65th) and Laurence “rivermanl” Houghton (119th).

Melanie "Callisto 5" Weisner

 

Here are the full final table results for this week’s Sunday Warm-Up:

1. Jason "jakoon1985" Koon (Canada) - $109,869.77 2. jurata_PL (Poland) - $81,876.60 3. sneker (Denmark) - $57,733.50 4. hasuzlasu (Poland) - $40,238.50 5. TryToExploit (Poland) - $29,741.50 6. Veritas0086 (Germany) - $22,743.50 7. pasty71 (United Kingdom) - $15,745.50 8. papafast1 (United Kingdom) - $8,747.50 9. buckguy2200 (Mexico) - $5,598.40

Weisner, Makhija Final-Table Sunday 500

This week’s Sunday 500 drew 795 players with big-name pros Melanie Weisner and Amit Makhija both securing spots at the final table.

But both Weisner and Makhija missed out on the four-way deal that doled out the lion’s share of the almost $400k prize pool, with Portuguese player AtnirTPT going the distance to take the title and $44,777.

The biggest prize, however, went to Sebastian “p0cket00” Sikorski, who took down $59,121.

Sikorski, a Bwin Poker pro, has amassed over $5.4 million in online career earnings, including more than $2.6 million on PokerStars alone.

Here are the full final-table results for this week’s Sunday 500, adjusted to reflect the four-way deal:

1. AtnirTPT (Portugal) - $44,777.93* 2. 140Tank a/a (Australia) - $47,441.62* 3. boytakas (Philippines) - $39,260,41* 4. p0cket00 (Canada) - $59,121.29* 5. Callisto 5 (Canada)  - $20,034.00 6. Olya2Ace (Russia) - $16,059.00 7. head07 (Germany) - $12,084 8. AMAK316 (Canada) - $8,148.75 9. noirduck (Hungary) - $4,968.75

Amit "AMAK316" Makhija also made a final table this Sunday.

 

Ireland’s sexylady409 Wins Sunday Million

6,783 players from around the world took a shot at the biggest weekly tournament on the web, but it was Ireland’s sexylady409 that took home the title and $132,928.

In the end it was a four-way deal that decided this tournament, with Swiss player luizsanchez4 pocketing the day’s biggest prize: $155,104.

When this event reached the final four players a deal was agreed upon, at which time sexylady409 went on an absolute rampage. He knocked out WushuTM in fourth with A-Q vs. K-Q all-in preflop, then sent Paulkopopo packing with A-T against A-7.

The heads-up match lasted just two hands, not surprising since sexylady409 had a roughly 26 to 1 chip lead.

The final hand saw the money go in with sexylady409’s 4-2 outflopping his opponent’s J-7.

Here are the full final table results, adjusted to reflect the four-way deal:

1. sexylady409 (Ireland) - $132,928.76* 2. luizsanchez4 (Switzerland) - $155,104.05* 3. Paulkopopo (Germany) - $125,763.48* 4. WushuTM (Austria) - $128,305.21* 5. FellipeNunes (Brazil) - $56,977.20 6. Jengleleg (Netherlands) - $43,411.20 7. gladius_85 (Germany) - $29,845.20 8. PikkuHUMPPA (Finland) - $16,279.20 9. dijana123 (Slovenia) - $10,513.65

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As part of its Road to 100 Billion promo, PokerStars will award cash prizes every one million hands from 89,700,000 to 90,000,000 at regular real money ring game tables.

The first Milestone is expected to take place on Saturday, Nov. 24, with the final Mega Milestone likely to be awarded six days later.

The player who wins the 90-billionth hand on PokerStars will receive at least $20,00 in addition to other cash prizes accrued at the table.

Players can win considerably more depending on how many VPPs they’ve generated in the previous 50 hands. The winner of the Mega Milestone could potentially win over $100,000. To learn more about how prizes are calculated check the PokerStars website.

The biggest prize so far was awarded to edroqui07, from Columbia, who took home $42k for winning the 75-billionth hand.

Interestingly 27 players who signed up for PokerStars through PokerListings received a cash reward from the last 85-billionth hand giveaway.

Click here to sign up for PokerStars and get access to our massive sign-up bonus and exclusive promos.

While Maimone was busy cleaning up on Full Tilt, PokerStars was running the Main Event of another successful MicroMillions.

An astounding 60,072 players paid $22 to play the last event of MicroMillions III to create a prizepool of over $1 million.

Here’s a look at some of bigger tournaments that played out yesterday including a couple notable ones on Full Tilt.

Full Tilt Poker $500k Guaranteed

The Full Tilt $500k GTD was no cakewalk for Nick “FU_15” Maimone as the final table also included celebrated online grinders Ben “kidcardiff” Warrington and TJ “darkhorse19” Ulmer.

Warrington ended up finishing in fourth place for $36,907 while Ulmer made it all the way to heads-up but lost to Maimone and had to settle for a $72,696 consolation prize.

In total the event drew 2,796 to easily break the guarantee with close to $600k in the pot.

Prior to Black Friday the $500k GTD was actually a $750k-guaranteed event but if the site continues to succeed it would seem likely it will switch back to the bigger guarantee.

Maimone has been on a good run lately and nearly made his first WSOP final table this summer, coming in ninth place in the 6-Max $10k event that Greg Merson eventually won.

Chris Moorman, Peter Jetten and Ryan Daut all made the money in this week’s $500k guaranteed.

Here are the complete final-table payouts:

1. Nick “FU_15” Maimone - $103,452 2. TJ “darkhorse19” Ulmer - $72,696 3. PREDADOR-88 - $49,768 4. Kidcardiff - $36,907 5. BrazyCrain - $27,960 6. Obvamentz_IMO - $20,746 7. Vincent1204 - $14,818 8. CSWAMI - $10,512 9. newPOKface - $7,101

Fabian Quoss

 

Full Tilt Poker Brawl

German poker pro Fabian Quoss beat a 1,091-player field to win the knockout FTP Sunday Brawl yesterday for $43,640.

Quoss has over $1 million in lifetime live tournament earnings including a runner-up finish in the WSOP $5k NLHE event in 2009 for $427,911 and winning the 2010 English Poker Open for $340,409.

He’s also part of a collection of skilled German players who currently reside in London including Sebastian Ruthenberg, Tobias Reinkemeier and EPT London winner Benny Spindler.

Interestingly Spindler, who plays on Full Tilt as psychobenny, finished in 30th place in this week’s Sunday Brawl for $720 meaning Quoss got some serious bragging rights over his friend.

Noted pros Keven “Stammdogg” Stammen, Chris “Getting Daize” Oliver and Tyler “TheBrain” Cornell also all made the money in the Brawl.

Here are the complete final-table payouts for this week’s Sunday Brawl on Full Tilt:

1. Fabian Quoss - $43,640 2. Wirtue - $29,064 3. ANIMAL5050 - $20,729 4. Freddiewalli - $15,492 5. DAC48 - $11,564 6. JIM_BALLAS1980 - $8,509 7. MILF ISLAND - $6,327 8. Cheesies - $4,582 9. Globbaz82 - $273,273

MicroMillions III $22 Main Event

Russian axel397 navigated his way through a gargantuan 61,072-player field to turn his $22 buy-in into $140,062 in the PokerStars MicroMillions III Main Event.

Thanks to a three-way deal there were three players who earned over $100k in the tournament including second-place finisher Senter268 who picked up $105k and third-place finisher numeromis who got a very good deal to earn $125k.

Despite the low buy-in there were plenty of Team PokerStars Pros on hand for the massive event as Andre Akkari, Jan Heitmann, Toni Judet and Naoya Kihara were all in on the action.

Thanks to the tremendous size of the field, the top 7,920 players got paid. To put that in perspective, that’s bigger than the average Sunday Million’s total field size.

Here are the complete final-table payouts for the MicroMillions III Main Event:

1. axel396 - $140,062 2. Senter268 - $105,000 3. Numeromis - $125,000 4. Supersimu - $55,233 5. Keiruja - $35,898 6. Royal-Pusher - $22,083 7. Davaman - $13,802 8. IvanLiberman - $8,293 9. PSG96 - $5,520

PokerStars is running a special freeroll this Sunday, Dec. 2, at 12:30 ET with the top 100 finishers all getting a seat in the $10 buy-in Saturday qualifier with a guarantee of at least 10 packages, each worth $14,901, to the 2013 PCA.

The freeroll will actually end after the $10 Saturday PCA qualifier begins, so the top 100 players will instantly be shuffled into the 10-seat-GTD tournament.

Anyone who signed up for PokerStars through PokerListings is eligible to play the tournament. You just have to use the password provided below.

If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, just use the marketing code pl.com during the sign-up process and you’ll have access to all our exclusive offers. Click here to sign up for PokerStars.

The PCA is always the premier live tournament for online poker players amateur poker player John Dibella outlasted 1,072 players to win $1.7 million at the 2012 PCA.

Here are all the details on this week’s exclusive freeroll:

Name: PokerListings PCA SatelliteDate: Dec 2Time: 12:30 ETStructure: TurboBuy-in: FreerollTourney ID: 647963840Target Tournament: 645284779Guarantee (seats in target): 100Password: dog