Considering Playing The PokerStars $5million MTT

This coming Sunday (March 6th, 2011) is the 5th anniversary of PokerStars' Sunday Million tournament. One of, if not the biggest weekly online tournaments. In honor of this event PokerStars is going to be increasing the prize pool significantly.

For this special Sunday Million the buy-in will still be only $215 but there are going to be some extra incentives such as:

• $5 Million guaranteed prize pool
• $1 Million guaranteed first place prize
• Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 for the winner

Even though back in October I tried to come up with an micro stakes MTT schedule I haven't really been playing many. I try to play a few on Sundays, including the Sunday $1/4 Million but this last month I've been trying to get a lot of volume in double or nothing tournaments since it was going to be the last month.

The biggest MTT I entered was $11 but I'm really considering giving this one a go. Huge online MTTs like this don't come around often. I have been doing pretty well in poker and was going to reward myself with an entry in a couple of WCOOP events but I didn't have the time so maybe I should play this instead.

I'm a bit of a bankroll nit and I keep separate bankrolls for different types of games. I track my MTT bankroll using my MTT bankroll management spreadsheet. I've only played around 50 games on that bankroll but one nice final table got me off to a good start but since then not much has been going on.

According to my bankroll management rules my max allowed BI is only $5.50, well short of the $215 BI for the $5mil. Heck even the occasional times I play the $1/4 mil is too much but I've been doing pretty well in those. Enough to do a little better than break even until I get the big score.

If I play this, it probably won't be part of my regular MTT bankroll but instead out of the side money I don't have allocated to any particular bankroll.

I don't want to get into the habit of playing outside my bankroll so I'm a little torn. This could be such a huge deal though. My MTT isn't that great anymore and I don't have too much time to practice until Sunday. Final tabling it would be a huge deal for me but going relatively deep would be very nice too.

I'm being a whiney little **** about this I know. Is there anyone one else considering taking a shot at this? Any good links to articles/videos to help out my rusty MTT brain out?

Pep talk time: I've made a few final tables in the past. No wins but a couple of seconds. I have pretty high ITM and finish in the last 20% over 30% of the time. So I have a good chance of at least breaking even and a one time shot like this won't kill me.

Qualifying Through Satellites

If $215 is too big for your bankroll you can try to win a seat through a satellite tournament with a much smaller buy-in, as little as $1 or just a few FPPs. You can view the list of satellites by opening up the $5mil tournament (#409020010) and check out the bottom of the tournament lobby where it lists Satellites To This Tournament

If you've never played on PokerStars before you can download their software here.