PokerStars’ MicroMillions 5, the online poker tournament series with most buy-ins under ten dollars, wrapped up this weekend and in the end, Lithuania’s “stygher” made history, winning the Main Event and $160,726, the largest prize in the history of the tournament festival. The previous record was $157,218, won last year by “SoyDelGlobo.”
For a while, it didn’t look like the record would be hit. In fact, it appeared that the $1 million guarantee might not even be reached. When the $22 tournament started, there were fewer than 32,000 players registered, meaning the prize pool wasn’t even at $640,000 yet. Fortunately, there exists late registration; after another hour, the number of entrants was up to 50,000, meaning there was no more overlay to be had. Once the two-hour late registration period was over and the tournament was closed, at total of 59,213 had signed up, creating a prize pool of $1,184,260. 7,920 players got paid, with a min-cash worth $47.37.
It took over eleven hours for the field to be whittled to the nine player final table. Two players were well ahead of the rest: stygher with 125,256,892 and “lacostae,” the chip leader, with 128,431,177. While stygher was able to take advantage of that large stack, lacostae was not able to make his last, as he was eliminated in fourth place. It was a rough beat for lacostae, as he went all-in for his final 49 million after “S3XXYMUCK” raised pre-flop to 27 million. S3XXYMUCK called, revealing just J-9 off-suit, while lacostae had A-8 off. The flop, though, was 6-J-7, giving S3XXYMUCK top two pair and a stranglehold on the hand. The turn gave lacostae a flush draw, but that was it; the former chip leader was done.
After that, it looked like a heads-up showdown between S3XXYMUCK and stygher was inevitable. They had 348 million and 208 million chips, respectively, while MarieKen2112 had just 35 million. That heads-up match did, in fact, come to be, as MarieKen2112 moved all-in with J-T and was called by stygher with K-6. A K-K-Q flop was great for stygher, but MarieKen2112 picked up an open-ended straight draw. Another Queen on the turn did in MarieKen2112 as stygher improved to a full house.
Going into heads-up play, S3XXYMUCK had about a 100 million chip lead, 348,238,700 to 243,891,300. It took just 37 more hands to end things. It didn’t take long for stygher to pull even and eventually, after some trading of chips back and forth, he flipped the tables on his opponent, building his stack to 382 million.
On the final hand, stygher raised to 21.2 million pre-flop, S3XXYMUCK moved all-in for almost 208 million, and stygher called. Both had off-suited Ace-high, but stygher had the better kicker, Jack versus Six. The flop did nothing for either player, but the turn produced a Jack, pairing stygher and giving him the winning hand regardless of the river.
2013 PokerStars MicroMillions V – Final Table Results
1. stygher (Lithuania) — $160,726.14
2. S3XXYMUCK (Hungary) — $117,715.44
3. MarieKen2112 (Belgium) — $80,340.19
4. lacostae (Colombia) — $53,552.23
5. Legato (Sweden) — $34,805.40
6. Ramedium (Brazil) — $21,411.42
7. Mau9999 (Argentina) — $13,382.13
8. toril274 (Russia) — $8,041.12
9. Scrach face (Argentina) — $5,352.85
