Portugal’s Manuel Ruivo won the $20m GTD partypoker Online MILLIONS after agreeing upon a heads-up chip deal with the Dutchman Pim De Goede that saw both players bank more than $2m apiece.
I’m listening to Sergei Rachmaninoff, trying to comprehend how it feels to discuss a heads-up deal where you have to carve up $4,639,939 like a butcher dealing with a pig’s snout.
Who plays in their ears?
Do they put the Cuba Libre down, extinguish the cigarette?
Are they aware of the thousands of dollars thrown away with the casualness of the dice on a craps table, or are they so zombified by the size of the number that a nerve gas like paralysis stuns them?
$2,329,944.
$2,309,995.
What happens next?
How do you celebrate? How do you sleep? Who is the first person to benefit from your newfound wealth?
What do you buy?
Do you buy a horse and tins of black and white paint and turn it into a zebra, or do you go the whole hog and buy a zebra?
Do you run outside and set off the fire hydrant, dancing naked in the street?
Do you buy the street?
As the hair of the bow glides across the four strings these things cross my mind
Manuel Ruivo Wins partypoker MILLIONS Online
After a full year of marketing, partypoker has done it. Tom Waters and the team are the proud owners of the largest-ever online multi-table tournament (MTT) in the world, and the winner was a man bang in form.
In the summer, Manuel Ruivo won a 535-entrant Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) DeepStack event at the Venetian for $58,404 and then went on to finish 6/7361 in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Millionaire Maker for $230,120. A few Shirley Temple’s later and another $130,391 fell into his bank account for finishing runner-up to Arunas Sapitavicius in another MSPT DeepStack event at the Venetian.
Under normal circumstances, that’s enough.
A Blimp of a good year.
You don’t need a beautiful woman underneath the mistletoe. You don’t need three Kola Cubes in your 10p mix-up. You don’t need to be the last person to use the Covent Garden escalator before it packs up.
You’ve made it.
And then this happened…
Playing under the pseudonym Sheparentao, Ruivo manoeuvred his way through the missiles, warheads and spud guns fired in his direction by 4,367-entrants in the $5,300 buy-in, $20m GTD Online MILLIONS.
Someone dig old Morris out of the ground.
We have ourselves a Guinness World Record.
Ruivo carved up that heads-up joint with the Dutchman Pim “ForMatherRussia” De Goede, another man bang in form after finishing 2/833 in the £550 Finale at the MILLIONS UK in Dusk till Dawn (DTD) for £70,485 in October.
Once the Slovenian Scarmak3r hit the rail in third, the pair played one hand before entering negotiations on a deal. They never reemerged leaving a frustrated Joey Ingram (who was streaming the entire thing live on his Twitch Channel) to say:
“They are not even going to play this out! What is this bullshit!”
“They aren’t even going to play or the title after all that!”
Nope.
The event created four millionaires, none more chuffed than Scarmak3r who qualified for the game via a $5 online satellite.
And here I am writing this when I could be earning millions.
The $21,835,000 is a record, as is the $2,329,944 first prize, beating the previous record of $2,278,097.50 earned by Tyson “POTTERPOKER” Marks during the 2010 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event in PokerStars. The only other $2m+ score recorded before this event was also on Stars when Kyle “First-Eagle” Weir won $2,000,020.70 after taking down the 2011 Sunday Million 10th Anniversary.
“The players wanted this to happen, and they wanted to do it with us. That’s what makes me really happy,” said partypoker LIVE President, John Duthie.
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results
1. Manuel “Sheparentao” Ruivo – $2,329,944*
2. Pim “ForMatherRussia” de Goede – $2,309,995*
3. Scarmak3r – $1,364,688
4. Pedro “Maddonaa” Marques – $1,091,750
5. J2805667 – $818,813
6. COL_Moutarde – $655,050
7. Wheatforsheep – $491,288
8. IrginALUS – $327,525
*Agreed upon the heads-up deal.
Five superstars who nearly made it to the bitter end of this fish market were Chris “Ad_Finem” Kruk (11th), Jon “ICMslut99” Clark (19th), Chance “ChanceSeeYou” Kornuth (22nd), Fedor Holz (31st), Philipp Gruissem (37th).
You can watch the final two tables, right here:
