Poker Writer
The ClubWPT Gold Million tournament on Sunday shattered its guarantee by more than double, making it a highly successful event.
The tournament had a 1 million guarantee and an entry fee of 218 Chips (site currency that players can exchange for dollars). The 11,392 entries generated a final prize pool of 2,278,400. That made it the largest tournament ever held on the platform.
ClubWPT Gold Million compared favorably to last summer’s online bracelet events. All of the bracelet events had a bigger buy-in than the Gold Million, but none came close to a prize pool of almost $2.3 million. Only seven out of 28 that ran to completion even crested $1 million. The largest of those, Online Event #13, matched the Gold Million’s guarantee, but it finished with a $1,445,850 prize pool.
Running in a Mystery Bounty format, the tournament also awarded a whopping 180,000 for the top pull there. That prize was reportedly among the first claimed, leaving a disappointed group of thousands vying for lesser sums.
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Huge Numbers For a Single-Flight Event
ClubWPT Gold promoted the event as “the biggest online one-day tournament since the glory days of online poker” on X. And indeed, the tournament was a single-flight event that had qualifiers for weeks prior.
That differs from other big online poker tournaments in the modern day, which often have multiple day 1 flights. Even big online tournaments have gone this route, including some on ClubWPT Gold.
ClubWPT Gold also gave away plenty of seats, some via ambassador giveaways.
The operator also promoted it as a throwback to the golden days of poker in another sense. A social media meme didn’t shy away from labeling the site as the softest in the industry: “Smiling through it all! Can’t believe this is my life. Thought I missed the poker boom… now I’m playing a one-day, 1 million GTD on the softest site around.”
ClubWPT Gold is able to run such large tournaments due to several advantages over competitors, both sweepstakes and real-money. While its fellow sweepstakes poker sites have been forced to exit multiple states, ClubWPT Gold’s pivot to an AI training model has enabled it to continue operating in most states for the time being.
Meanwhile, the real-money poker network remains limited to a handful of states. States such as Maryland and Virginia are looking at legalizing online poker. However, Maine only recently made it nine states with legal online poker, and even that’s only in theory, as no operators have yet launched there.
Doug Polk, Other Pros Enjoy the Action
While plenty of recreational players got in on the action, pros across the country also enjoyed the rare opportunity for a huge online prize pool that hearkened back to the pre-Black Friday online poker days.
Doug Polk jumped in as one of the 11,000-plus entries into the event. He streamed the action throughout the day, climbing above 15,000 viewers.
Polk streamed for seven hours, making it into the top 1,000. Eventually, with 641 players left, he moved his short 11-big blind stack all in from the cutoff with K♠Q♦. The player in the small blind called withA♥3♥. The runout gave his opponent a straight, and Polk was eliminated in 635th place for 781 Chips and a 60-Chip bounty.
Several other players expressed how much fun they had playing in this tournament, such as Mike Holtz, who made a very deep run with a 38th-place finish after holding a top-five chip count for much of the tournament.
Many called for ClubWPT Gold to make this tournament a regular event, with some suggesting a monthly million.
