Finally after 4 months of launch, the 1st million dollar prize of PokerStars Spin & Go tournament rolled out yesterday and was clinched by the Russian player sss66666. Poker players around the world has been anticipating this big money for long and had played millions of hands on Spin & Go tables hoping to hit this jackpot.
For those who are still unaware of Spin & Go, it is a hyper-turbo 3-max tournament in which players play for a prize pool randomly generated by the spin-wheels just before game begins. PokerStars launched these lottery-style poker tourneys back in September 2014 wherein a player has an option to play with a buy-in of $1, $3, $7, $15 or $30. The prize in these 3-player tourneys were said to be ranging from double the buy-in to 1000 times the buy-in which the winner alone was awarded. However, in the games of higher prize pools, the 2 players loosing on the table would get 10% of the first prize.
PokerStars has been promoting this rapid variant of poker projecting huge prize pools against minimal buy-ins but, most of the time the prize pool remained just double the buy-ins. It is noteworthy here that only 3 out of 10 million $5 Spin & Go tourneys on PokerStars were slated to put $1 million prize pool on the stake. In the game played yesterday, sss66666 defeated Belgium’s geldduvel and Bulgaria’s Nonko999 to win $1 million in the first place. geldduvel and Nonko999 pocketed $100,000 in this $5 Spin & Go tourney.
The launch of Spin & Go drew a lot of criticism for PokerStars from the poker pros and industry experts saying it boosts the luck factor in the game. The Amaya owned company, however sidelined every suggestion and continued this rapid fire format of poker in order to lure more casual players. If the randomly generated prizes of the millions of Spin & Go tourney are analyzed over a period of time, one could find that most of the games generate prize pool not more than double the buy-in. It clearly indicates that PokerStars is beguiling online poker players by making them play more and more Spin & Go games in search of a bigger prize which ultimately leads to a habit similar to gambling.
Spin & Go games may award a huge prize to one player among the millions out there once or twice a year of but it is definitely encouraging the luck-based play which is not good for the game in long run.