Millions of people choose Sunday as their day of worship. It is a holy day. The supposed day of the resurrection of Christ. For thousands of poker player they too worship their own deity on a Sunday. They sit down and say a prayer to their God; and his name is PokerStars.
It is the most eagerly anticipated day in the poker calendar. It sends poker players into a spin. The barrage of tournaments has the capacity to produce heroes and slay those less fortunate in the thousands. The piéce de résistance is the Sunday Million. The Holy Grail of the online poker week. So you can imagine the fervor when The Sunday Million celebrated its 7th Anniversary with a $7 million guaranteed blockbuster. It was akin to great sex, and over 45,000 people joined the orgy.
I was one of the 45,000 with rabies like foam streaming down the side of my face. It’s not every day you can become a millionaire from a stake as low as $215. For a poker player it’s a shot you have to take. People say that the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event is the softest live tournament in the world, due to the mass of fish floundering in the poker pool. The same is true of a 45,000 online event and that is why it is so popular. $1 million and plenty of value attract a big crowd. But I guess I was part of the value. There is a reason I write about poker, instead of playing, and it couldn’t have been expressed more clearly than the fact that I didn’t win a single hand.
But for every fish like me there was a seasoned grinder like David ‘sexygee’ Gent. What do they put in the water in Leeds? Gent living in an area that has to lock up its daughters every weekend due to the presence of top quality poker players such as Jake Cody, Matt Perrins, JP Kelly and Chris Brammer. Not only is Gent a big cash game player, but he is also has a SCOOP title on his mantelpiece after winning a Pot-Limit 5-Card Draw event in 2009. The man many say is responsible for teaching Chris Moorman how to fling the cards about the felt, finishing second for $836,321.83 after a three-way deal was reached with the other two lucky bar-stewards Kasra84 and the eventual winner benislovas. Gent was the chip leader holding 201,798,962 of the imaginary ceramic discs after 15-hours of play, but benislovas was able to over turn that lead to take the title. Not bad for a player who is more at home playing $11 MTT’s. I guess he was supposed to be part of the added value as well.
