The PokerStars Sunday Million 20th Anniversary tournament has moved into its Phase 2 window this week, proving that two decades have not dulled the series’ pull. The $5 million guaranteed event saw 799 players survive a marathon Phase 1 that drew 24,881 total entries, among them PokerStars ambassador Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg.
The Sunday Million 20th Anniversary and Its $109 Ticket
The Sunday Million launched in 2006 at the same $109 buy-in it still carries today, a rarity in online poker where headline tournaments are regularly relaunched under new names and price points. PokerStars built the 20th Anniversary edition around that consistency, keeping the entry fee untouched while inflating the guarantee to $5 million, the richest number the tournament has carried in its history.
Rather than run as a single weekend event, the anniversary tournament adopted a phased structure that started back on June 28 and stretches across roughly ten weeks. Phase 1 flights ran repeatedly through mid-August, with three separate starts each day, at 4:25 p.m., 7:25 p.m., and 10:25 p.m. BST, giving players spread across time zones and work schedules multiple chances to bag a stack and advance.
Nearly 25,000 Entries Funnel Into Phase 2
Across its full run, Phase 1 processed 24,881 total entries, a figure padded by rebuys and re-entries across the multiple flights rather than 24,881 unique players, but still a substantial number for a tournament that could easily have shrunk in a crowded online calendar. Of those entries, 799 players survived to lock up their seats in Phase 2, which begins September 6.
The chip counts heading into the next phase show a wide range of stack depths. Austrian player “go1vs1 legko” currently sits atop the counts with 1,076,054 chips, with Canada’s “getdamoney0” close behind at 1,045,132. Brazilian grinder Douglas “h.dogui” Hobold advanced with a strong 872,974 stack, while Steven “SvZff” van Zadelhoff bagged 695,141 and Tom “Tom_Poker_NL” Talboom sits on 532,332. Finland’s Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna rounds out the group of notables with 402,413.
Spraggy Beats His Fellow Ambassador to a Seat
The most talked about storyline heading into Phase 2 involves PokerStars ambassador Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg, who advanced with 187,043 chips, a mid-table stack by the standards of the current counts but a seat nonetheless. Spragg reportedly secured his place by beating fellow PokerStars ambassador Sebastian Huber in a “Race to the Finals” style challenge between the two, a promotional angle PokerStars has leaned on before to generate buzz around its content creators during marquee series.
Spragg will not be alone in representing the PokerStars ambassador roster in the later stages. Fellow ambassador Marle Spragg is also through to the Finals, giving the anniversary tournament a genuine subplot for viewers who follow the pair’s content beyond the raw chip counts. Whether either can convert their online following into a run deep into a field that started with tens of thousands of entries is a different question from generating attention, but the presence of recognizable names in a tournament built around nostalgia is a natural fit for PokerStars’ marketing push.
Why PokerStars Bet Big on Its Own History
The Sunday Million has always occupied a specific place in online poker’s story as one of the tournaments credited with proving that mass market weekly guarantees could work at scale, well before high variance boosted formats and rake structures reshaped how sites build their weekly schedules. Turning 20 gave PokerStars a natural marketing hook, and the operator used it to push the guarantee to a historic high while resisting the temptation to change the format that made the tournament recognizable in the first place.
Entry into the anniversary edition mirrors how PokerStars has always fed the Sunday Million, through a wide satellite network that starts at $0.55, alongside Spin & Go tournaments priced at $0.75 or $4 that can turn a small stake into a full buy-in. PokerStars also ran a Weekly Ticket Machine promotion, handing out 918 seats each Saturday during the qualifying window, a scale of giveaway that helps explain how the tournament pulled in nearly 25,000 total entries despite a global online poker market that has grown far more fragmented since 2006.
What Comes Next
Phase 2 begins September 6 and will trim the surviving 799 players down toward the Finals, where the $5 million guarantee will ultimately be paid out. Players who have never navigated a multi-phase structure before should note that stack preservation through the early levels of Phase 2 matters more than aggression, since the field is already condensed and pay jumps compress quickly once the bubble approaches. For players brushing up on the fundamentals before facing a stacked field like this one, Poker Pro Academy’s guide to poker hand rankings is a useful refresher on the hand values that decide close all-in spots when short stacked opponents start shoving.
PokerStars has not yet announced whether the Sunday Million will carry an elevated guarantee again next year, but the strong Phase 1 turnout for the 20th Anniversary edition suggests the tournament’s pull with the recreational player base remains intact two decades after its first running.
