When it was given a $5 million guarantee back in April, the GGPoker WSOP Mini Main Event might have been expected to scrape past that ambitious total.
That was GGPoker and the WSOP completely blew everyone out of the water with bumper attendances, WSOP bracelet celebration videos and enough excitement to make people almost forget that it was all going on behind closed doors and computer screens instead of catching your death of cold in the Rio, shivering in the air conditioned climate more akin to living in Siberia than Las Vegas.
Once the dust settled on registrations in the Mini Main Event, the prizepool was huge, and at $7.2 million represented a serious success story for GGPoker, the poker site on which the tournament – and the final 54 of the 85 planned events – took place.
It took over 16 hours at the felt to crown a winner and award that famous WSOP bracelet and when it was won, it went to Ivan Zufic, who won his first-ever WSOP gold. Costing just $500 to enter, the event welcomed 15,205 entries. Zufic won $843,460 to add to his monumental achievement in grabbing the gold.