The last time we checked in with PartyPoker more than a week ago, it was a bit messy. The much-anticipated return of the PartyPoker MILLION Sunday tournament didn’t exactly go as planned, and a flight of players didn’t get their seats into the Day 2 portion of the event.
However, PartyPoker rectified the situation, paid players for their troubles, and tried it again…successfully.
Meanwhile, anonymous hand histories were made available. PartyPoker spokesman Rob Yong continued to interact with players on social media about late registration and other tournament details. And Marti Roca de Torres took a sponsorship with Team Online.
PartyPoker MILLION Fixed
After the initial return of the PartyPoker MILLION experienced difficulties on November 3, PartyPoker wasted no time in setting up the next one to try again.
On November 3, Day 1A kicked off the next $215 buy-in MILLION, with Day 1B on November 5, Day 1C on the 7th, and Day 1D on Sunday, November 10. When all players with chips were put into Day 2 on November 10, it worked. All players took their seats and played forward.
The tournament garnered a total of 4,658 entries, which created a prize pool of $931,600. But as promised, PartyPoker put in nearly $70,000 to push the prize pool to $1 million and create a sizeable overlay for the players.
In the end, “Velazquez76” won the tournament for $152,770, and “mickeyMous3” took home $106,650 for second place.
Hand Histories and Other Changes
Rob Yong has been keeping busy on Twitter, coordinating with players to make changes that better the online poker experience. Some changes are minor, others are fairly significant.
One feature that Yong was able to implement was to make hand histories available for download in the “mygame” tab. It took longer than planned due to encryption concerns (that were resolved), but players were able to begin downloading those hand histories, albeit anonymous ones, on November 8.
https://twitter.com/rob_yong_/status/1192927714828832768?s=20
Yong also tweeted about other changes, asking players to weigh in on why players are not lining up for non-PKO multi-table tournaments, late registration for MTTs, and reentries.
Player responses seemed to indicate that players liked the idea of one hour of late registration and one reentry for MTTs. And for hourly MTTs from $1.10 to $55 buy-ins, players would have a five-minute clock through Level 22 in order to be in the money after two hours of play.
MartiRoca Joins Team Online
PartyPoker announced this week that Marti Roca de Torres of Spain joined Team Online. Playing as “MartiRoca” online, he will represent the European ring-fenced market for PartyPoker going forward.
The online poker pro lives in Mataro with his wife and two daughters. The intellectual graduated from university with a degree in economics, then returned to school to obtain postgraduate degrees in teaching, law, and local finance. And he did that all before the age of 29.
By 2016, Torres had become a poker pro on a full-time basis, mostly focusing on internet MTTs. But he has had success at the live tables as well. In 2017, he traveled to Rozvadov in the Czech Republic to play the World Series of Poker Europe. And he ended up winning the WSOP Europe Main Event for a massive €1,115,207 payday and a gold bracelet.
In order to spent the most time possible with his family, Torres will play mostly online. He often streams via his own Twitch channel when he plays on PartyPoker.eu.
“I am very excited to be part of this beautiful project,” the Spaniard told PartyPoker. “I will try to bring all my qualities to each and every stream, and most of all I hope people enjoy watching my content!”
https://twitter.com/martirocatorres/status/1194032351405363201?s=20
