Numbers down, payouts high for Sunday tournaments

It was bound to have an impact. But the major Sunday online tournaments rolled on despite the NETeller and e-wallet uncertainties, with only a marginal decline in players and still more than $1.3 million in the prize pool for the PokerStars.com Sunday Million.

To complicate matters even further for online poker rooms trying to draw fields to their Sunday tournaments: It was NFL Conference Final weekend, drawing the attention of a large portion of the poker-playing public away from the tables and towards the TV.

Nonetheless, the fields were only marginally smaller from last week's record numbers, there were plenty of American players and the pro turnout was strong, leading to some great final table action and substantial payouts for the winners.

The PokerStars.com Sunday Million, the biggest of them all, still drew 6,742 entrants and paid out $164,009 to German player Mazinho1977, who outlasted a tough final table including pro Chris Savage.

Mazinho1977 and UMTerp agreed to chop the pot when they got down to heads-up, so both players walked away with six-figure paydays.

The rest of the final table results were as follows:

Full Tilt Poker's $750,000 guaranteed event had 1,380 players who ponied up the $500 buy-in, including one of their own sponsored pros Eric Froehlich, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner.

No deals were brokered at this tournament however and eventual champion vegan213 walked away with $141,000 all to himself. Froehlich represented well, but ended up busting out in fifth.

The final table results were as follows:

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