PokerStars Ambassador Nick Walsh makes final day of the Sunday Million 17th Anniversary – $1m for first
From a field of 39,500 entries, just 44 players remain in contention for the million dollar first prize on offer for the Sunday Million 17th Anniversary champion and PokerStars Ambassador Nick Walsh is one of them.
When play resumes tonight at 19:00 CET, Walsh will take his seat safe in the knowledge he’s already secured a cash of $9,639.30.
He’ll start in the middle of the pack, 24th of the 44 remaining players, with a stack of 17 big blinds. Walsh, who often streams his Spin & Go sessions on the PokerStars Twitch channel, will be well versed on playing a stack of that size.
The streamer is known for providing educational poker content within his streams and he also recently shared his top tips for new players for a national newspaper article in the UK.
Seventeen Big Blinds and a Dream
On social media, “seventeen big blinds and a dream,” was how Walsh described his situation heading into the third and final day of action. Although he wasn’t streaming his play last night, and won’t tonight either, he was uploading regular Instagram stories during yesterday’s action, which charted his journey.
Among those stories, he talked about sneaking into a min cash, and he also posted four key hands which he uploaded to the PokerStars Hand Replayer.
In the first of those, the button opens from a stack of 22 big blinds at 2,500/5,000 ante 625, and he defends from the big blind with 7♠ 6♥ . The button then proceeds to bet every street of a 2♣ 6♠ A♠ 8♥ 8♣ board, including shoving the river.
Walsh correctly sniffs out the bluff, his opponent had K♥ 5♥ . Nice hand Nick! That win got him rolling and boosted his stack to 67 big blinds.
The craziest of the four hands occurs far later in the tournament. There are just 80 players remaining, and by this point the blinds have increased to 175,000/350,000 ante 45,000. It folds to Walsh on the button, and he makes a min-raise with A♠ J♥ from a stack of just under 23 big blinds.
The big blind, who has 13.5 big blinds, elects to jam all-in and Walsh calls. He probably didn’t expect his opponent to roll over 8♥ 2♦ . There was a 32% chance Walsh would suffer a bad beat, but the 3♠ 9♥ 9♣ A♠ 2♣ board stayed clean and he collected the pot.
Nick Walsh has made it to the final day of the Sunday Million 17th Anniversary tournament, the winner will collect $1M
He’s going to Win A Million Dollars
Walsh wasn’t the only one documenting his deep run in the tournament. During his own stream, Spraggy, who had earlier min-cashed the tournament, had Nick’s table open and would regularly cut away from his own action when Walsh was involved in a big pot. He caught two big hands that Walsh played.
In the first Walsh moves all-in on the turn, gets called and secures a big double up.
And in the second Walsh bets the turn, gets raised and moves all-in for not much more. Will his opponent call or will he win without showdown?
Walsh shared several Instagram stories of the key hands in his deep run and also had Spraggy on his rail
Who’s left in?
A look through the final 44 players reveals several other interesting storylines ahead of the final day of play. Sitting in sixth place overnight, staszor is no stranger to success on PokerStars, earlier this month he took down Event 75 in the Bounty Builder Series, winning almost $20,000.
Just behind him in the chip counts, you’ll find RFN1986. The Brazilian is a Blowout Series champion, having taken down a $55 NLHE event for over $33,000 back in January 2021.
Also in the top ten in chips is a name that will be familiar to long time PokerStars viewers, that of dariepoker. Hailing from Romania, Vlad ‘dariepoker’ Darie has racked up over $2.3M in live poker earnings, including a WPT title, multiple WSOP final tables and an EPT side event victory in Monte-Carlo in 2016.
Naturally, he also has a string of big online cashes to his name, including a fifth place finish in the 2022 SCOOP Main Event-H, good for over $325,000 and another fifth place finish in The Big Blowout $5M GTD, where he cashed for $238,483. Finish fifth tonight and he’d bank another $267,000.
Rounding out the top 10 is Brazil’s atredezini, who took down a WCOOP title in 2021, winning Event #73-M: $109 NLHE 6-Max, PKO, Freezeout and $34,399.
Scroll further down the list and you’ll notice Stevan “random_chu” Chew. The Australian, who plays from Indonesia, is one of the shorter stacks with just under 15 big blinds, and starts 40/44.
However, one double up for the player who can count a WCOOP and BSOP Online Main Event win among his many accolades and he’ll suddenly be a real threat.
And whatever the final result tonight you suspect roflcopter88 is going to be over the moon, they satellited into the $215 tournament via a $2.20 satellite.
In short, there’s plenty of talent among the final 44 of this massive field.
Pass The Mic
Viewers of the regular Sunday Million streams that are broadcast most Monday’s on the PokerStars Twitch and YouTube channel will know that Walsh is a regular guest commentator/host alongside James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton.
Indeed, he was booked for that very role tonight, but he’s handed over guest commentary duties to Fintan Hand, who’ll now be alongside James and Joe in the virtual commentary booth.
If you want to see who takes down the title and the million dollar first prize, you can follow all the action from 19:30 CET at twitch.tv/pokerstars or psta.rs/YouTube.
For Nick Walsh, he’ll be hoping his only appearance on tonight’s stream will be as the new Sunday Million Anniversary champion.
Walsh will be hoping his only appearance on the stream tonight will be as the new Sunday Million Anniversary champion
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