 Manuel "Sheparentao" Ruivo has won the largest online poker tournament in history after taking down partypoker's historic MILLIONS Online for a record $2,329,944 shortly after midnight GMT on 06 December, following a deal.
The Portuguese, who resides in the Netherlands, overcame a field comprising 4,367 total entries to claim the title after a heads-up deal with Pim "ForMatherRussia" de Goede, who settled for second place and a $2,309,995 payday.
Ruivo said of his historic win: "I feel really grateful for the opportunity to play in the biggest online tournament ever and to have conquered 1st place. Dreams do come true."
The 2018 MILLIONS Online edition is also sure to live long in the memory for Blaz "Scarmak3r" Zerjav, who successfully managed to spin up a $5.50 satellite buy-in all the way to an astonishing 3rd place finish worth $1,364,688 as the Slovenian enjoyed the run of his life.
The first millionaire to be made on the night was Pedro "Maddonaa" Marques (Netherlands) who departed in 4th to bank $1,091,750 ahead of 5th place "j2805667" of Malta, who collected $818,813.
Former partypoker North America MILLIONS Super High Roller winner, Christopher "Ad_Finem" Kruk added a further $163,763 to his lifetime winnings thanks to an 11th place finish, while Fedor Holz departed in 31st on Day 2 to post the best Team partypoker score for a $65,505 payday.
The Team partypoker pro said: "What an awesome tourney this was. I was very excited to run this deep, but unfortunately didn't make it to the final table!"
A 707-strong showing in the penultimate, Day 1D starting flight left partypoker just 123 entries shy of its record-breaking $20,000,000 guarantee heading into Tuesday's Day 1E. Aided by a Mega-Satellite schedule that awarded over 1,000 seats, the Final Day 1 drew 490 final entries to send the eventual prizepool soaring past its guarantee to $21,835,000 – the largest prize-pool ever generated in a single online poker tournament, and almost $10,000,000 ahead of the previous record.
687 players successfully negotiated their path to Day 2 from Day 1 flights A-E, including the overall chip leader, Team partypoker's Philipp Gruissem after his storming Day 1A showing.
Gruissem was joined by fellow Team partypoker members, Fedor Holz, Sam Trickett, Dzmitry Urbanovich, Anatoly Filatov, Kristen Bicknell, Joni Jouhkimainen, Roberto Romanello, João Simão and Josep Simunic, all of whom failed to make it through to the final day.
"wheatforsheep" of Mexico topped the 29 players who come back for Day 3 with eyes firmly fixed on the $2.7 million first place prize, before his hopes were extinguished with 7 remaining for a $491,288 score.
partypoker players can now look ahead to next year's instalment which promises to be better than ever.
Below are the full final table results:
Position Player Country Prize
1st Sheparentao Netherlands $2,329,943.88*
2nd ForMatherRussia Malta $2,309,994.87*
3rd Scarmak3r Slovenia $1,364,687.50
4th Maddonaa Netherlands $1,091,750
5th j2805667 Malta $818,812.50
6th COL_Moutarde Canada $655,050
7th wheatforsheep Mexico $491,287.50
8th orginALUS Lithuania $327,525
*denotes a two-way deal
partypoker LIVE president, John Duthie said: "The partypoker LIVE events had been a great success, so why not translate this into the virtual world?
"What then happened this last week was miraculous! 2,190 (unique) players believed in the dream and pushed that prizepool to a staggering $21.9m; I mean that's very nearly double the size of the largest online MTT before that – DOUBLE!
"Players wanted this to happen and they wanted to do it with us. That's what makes me really happy. It isn't the staff of partypoker that are celebrating the record, it should be the players who can be proud of helping to make history."
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Manuel "Sheparentao" Ruivo has won the largest online poker tournament in history after taking down partypoker's historic MILLIONS Online for a record $2,329,944 shortly after midnight GMT on 06 December, following a deal.
