One of the oldest online poker networks catering to U.S.-based players, the Winning Poker Network (WPN), announced that the $1,000,001 GTD Million Dollar Sunday tournaments would remain as regular events on its schedule. However, the tournament has not been able to reach its massive guarantees recently, including the latest event on Easter when the network was forced to add more than $250,000 to the prize pool out of its own pockets.
The $1,000,001 GTD Million Dollar Sunday, which took place April 1 at WPN’s popular Americans Cardroom, attracted only 2,991 entrants, according to the latest news release by the Winning Poker Network. Explaining the low number of participants with the Easter holiday, the company announced Monday that the $250+$15 buy-in event featured a prize pool of only $747,750. WPN had to make up for the shortfall by adding $252,251 to the prize pool to ensure its ambitious $1,000,001 guarantee.
Last year, WPN announced that at the beginning of 2018, it would host 12 weekly Million Dollar Sunday events with $1,000,001 in guaranteed prize pools each. Although the network’s previous events saw enormous success, some experts were quite surprised that WPN had decided to hold these tournaments each week. Even more surprisingly, however, the online poker operator now remains determined to bring the weekly Million Dollar Sunday as regular events in its tournament schedule. The event will be held every Sunday, at 3:00 p.m. (ET), and it will feature the “half-price” buy-in of $265 ($250+$15).
Meanwhile, WPN’s other big tournaments topped their guarantees this weekend. The $200,000 GTD Warm Up attracted 2,175 players who paid the $100+$9 buy-in, contributing to the $217,500 total prize pool. Another Easter Sunday event, the $150,000 GTD Hold’em Sunday Special with $200+$15 buy-in, also saw great success with its 835 entrants and a prize pool of $167,000, which was split between the 126 players in the money bubble.
WPN Takes Measures to Increase Players’ Participation
The reason behind the fewer entrants at the latest $1,000,001 GTD Million Dollar Sunday is easily explained by the fact that it ran on Easter Sunday. Many of the regular players were probably away from their computers and spending time with their family and friends. However, WPN has decided to take measures and increase participation by adding more satellites and sub-satellites to the tournament.
In addition, more seats are available through the three mega-satellites each Friday, Saturday and Sunday, while there are now twice as many Freebuy qualifiers that guarantee seats in the event. Several other tournaments also offer seats to the 1,000,001 GTD Million Dollar Sunday tournaments. All this will make it easier and more affordable for poker players to qualify, so it is expected that there will be more participants buy-in in the upcoming events.
Along with the weekly $1,000,001 GTD Million Dollar Sunday tourneys, the network has also announced the High Five Tournament Series which will run from April 18 through April 22 on Americas Cardroom. For five days, players will be able to take part in five events featuring more than $1.5 million in guaranteed prize pools. The games will be NL Texas Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha in several structures, including regular, re-buy/add-on, turbos and mega stack hyper turbos, and knockouts. $420+$30 buy-in Main Event will be played Sunday, April 22, and it will offer $420,000 guarantee.
