Sunday online poker tournament news

The Sunday action continued this week with some serious ramping up of rewards but lower turnouts at some venues.

PartyPoker upped the ante by adding a $300 000 guaranteed tournatment to its offering (see previous InfoPowa report) which will run every Sunday at 12:45 p.m. and has a $215 buy-in.

Party just cleared the guarantee with an attendance of 1 525 players generating a $305 000 prize pool. The estimated first prize of $61 000 was diluted following a six way chip count split agreement between the final table survivors, and a total of 200 players finally cashed.

Attendances were disappointing at Bodog Poker, which had to top up its $100 000 guaranteed tourney with just over $17 000 when only 828 players entered for the event, and over at UltimateBet the $200 000 guarantee fell short and had to be given a $20 000 infusion due to player stayaways when only 897 entrants registered.

In the event, player Capsocool took the Bodog main prize of $25 000, and the big money at UltimateBet went to tutnik11 who won the tournament and pocketed $45 000 in prize money.

Elsewhere, 888.com's Pacific Poker pushed up their guaranteed prizepool to $75 000, which is now being contested for every Sunday at 8.00pm GMT with buy-ins around $65 + $5.

Absolute Poker continues to go after the weekend tournament fans and starting March 3, its Saturday guaranteed tournament will have a $150 000 prize pool - a $50 000 boost to the original guaranteed prizemoney. The site's Saturday guaranteed starts at 4:30 p.m. and has a $200+$16 buy-in. Absolute will also be offering a seperate $50 000 guaranteed tournament on Sundays, which will have a $150+$12 buy-in and start at 8 p.m.

Poker Stars numbers for its usually record-breaking Sunday Million event looked lower than previous similar contests.The $500+35 attracted 2 801 participants which created a $1 400 500 prize pool comprised of a top prize of $257 552 and a money bubble encompassing the top 414 placings. Player Zigenaaren took the top honour after a tense heads-up with Prevaricator, who nevertheless picked up a $130 947 paycheck for his troubles.

The action at Full Tilt was back to normal Sunday levels after the excitement of the FTOP series over the past weeks, and 2 302 players turned up for the recently boosted $400 000 guaranteed Sunday joust. With a prizepool of $460 000 to fight for the poker was fast and furious, culminating in CaptRunDown going home with the $84,460.38 main prize after a thriller of a final heads up with eazymoney05 ($51,841.04) The money cut was on the 351st player.