What happened
Heads-up for $1 million, TonyTheToenailcollector had 95 big blinds to zoru99's 23, and it ended with a cooler. No deal was possible. That is PokerListings' account, and it adds that he reached the final table as chip leader with 110 big blinds. zoru99 took $500,000.
We checked the name, and that is the name. Seven of his eight bullets did nothing. The eighth started Day 2 in 177th place of 2,362 and paid $1 million, according to Card Player.
While this was going on he was also heads-up in a $109 CoinMasters DOGE tournament, because one heads-up for a million dollars is apparently not enough to focus on. He finished second there for $19,204, which on a normal night is a payday and on this one is a footnote.
He was not new here. PokerListings puts his CoinPoker earnings at around $400,000 before these two results, and Rakeback lists $401,161. The $1 million is about two and a half times that career.
The rest of the final table: Bufunfa $325,000 for third off a $25 satellite, VivaLasVegans $225,000, SeniorTalez $160,000, raketenbauer $112,500 off a $50 satellite, billy1913 $77,500. More than 3,000 players won their seats through satellites, which is how you end up with a $250 tournament full of people who paid anywhere from nothing to $250.
The tournament around him was supposed to lose money. The field finished at 24,074 entries from 18,730 players, which means 5,344 times somebody looked at the first try and said again, and the prize pool was $5,537,250 against a $5 million guarantee. On October 5, after three of 26 flights, Card Player had 4,197 entries and a long way to go. On October 12, Deadspin had a little over 10,000 with a handful of flights left. Covering $5 million at $250 takes 20,000 entries, it said. It called the hole seven figures, with a real shot at beating GGPoker's record overlay of $1,791,760. Roughly 14,000 entries showed up after that Friday count. The forecast was a read on the pace, and a good one right up until the pace changed.
One thing the coverage does not reconcile. 24,074 entries at the $250 buy-in is $6,018,500, and the reported prize pool is $5,537,250, a gap of $481,250. Not every entry paid $250: more than 3,000 players got in through satellites, and Card Player says 4 percent of the players in the money won their ticket free. None of the reports says whether that accounts for the gap. Somebody at CoinPoker has the spreadsheet. The One returns in 2027.
Why it matters
The re-entry format is built for exactly this story: you are allowed to be wrong seven times and still be the guy in the screenshot. The winner turned $2,025 into $1,000,000 and the runner-up turned $634.50 into $500,000, per Card Player.
For ten days the other story was the bill. A guarantee is a promise a room makes before it knows who is coming, and the overlay is what it costs when nobody does. Then 24,074 entries came and the forecast became a winner's photo. We would love to tell you what the event earned CoinPoker, but the pool and the entries do not reconcile in anything we can read, and the reporting has moved on to the winner's screen name.
