Another look underneath the lampshade of the world of poker with the spotlight beaming brightly on partypoker’s online MILLIONS event, and the World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic. 

The battle to become number one in the poker tournament charts intensified this week after partypoker successfully migrated the MILLIONS brand to the virtual world.

Not everything went smoothly (Day 1A ran over by 45-minutes, costing party $25k in apology money), but it showed that Mike Sexton and co. are capable of matching PokerStars in three of the key areas of traction (live MTT, Online MTT, and Online High Stakes cash action), albeit in more isolated cases. The challenge comes longer term. Will people stick around minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-after-day?

1,047 entrants ensured they surpassed the $5m guarantee by $135,000, and Jonathan “sordykrd” Van Fleet was the last man seated, earning $1,027,000 to take his total online MTT earnings over the $9.5m mark.