After two weeks of delayed Sunday Million tournaments for Daylight Savings Time sufferers, the ever-popular Sunday tournament was back on a regular time schedule for the March 22nd edition. With spring having been declared official only two days prior, a new season awaited many thousands of players.

With the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) only days away and players looking to hone their skills in preparation of it, the Sunday Million welcomed a total of 7,906 players to the virtual felt to compete for a prize pool that became $1,581,200, gently putting the $1.5 million guarantee to a quiet shame.

The massive crowd of players quickly thinned, and when the money bubble approached, Bushman kindly went out in 1171st place on that bubble to allow dirkdiggler9 to cash for $316.24 and numerous others to follow. And with that, the field dwindled further to move toward the final nine players and the last table of the tourney.

At that point, it was bakaunko who pushed all-in with his short stack of 3,204,476 preflop holding pocket threes. bbs99 called from the small blind with pocket jacks, and it looked like the final table bubble would burst. But the flop came 6d-3h-5c to give bakaunko the advantage with trips. The 2c on the turn allowed that to hold, but the Jh on the river gave bbs99 the better set, leaving bakaunko ousted in tenth place with $7,906.00 for the bubble spot.

With that, the final nine players were established as follows:

Seat 1: Liqqa (6,120,206 in chips)
Seat 2: reef2287 (7,994,226 in chips)
Seat 3: ckingusc (14,669,864 in chips)
Seat 4: *xen (10,831,038 in chips)
Seat 5: Rabbiej (4,577,660 in chips)
Seat 6: 1GENERAL_TAO (6,775,126 in chips)
Seat 7: bbs99 (16,753,871 in chips)
Seat 8: tpreston (4,310,041 in chips)
Seat 9: bigsexyKN (7,027,968 in chips)

With bbs99 in the chip lead from the start of the action, Zachary "ckingusc" King was not far behind and looking to add another title to his already impressive resume. Many will remember him for his 2008 WCOOP main event win only a few months ago. To remind yourself of that brilliant win, watch our WCOOP main event highlight show right here...

Though action began rather slowly, bigsexyKN had no complaints as he doubled through bbs99 to stay alive. But eliminations would come soon.

With tpreston sitting on one of the shorter stacks, the move was inevitable. After reef2287 started the hand with a preflop raise, tpreston reraised all-in with Ad-Kc, but reef2287 called with pocket kings. The board came an uneventful Jc-Td-7d-3c-9h, and tpreston accepted $11,068.40 for the ninth place finish.

Rabbiej wasn't afraid to move some chips around and soon doubled through bigsexyKN to climb to over 9 million chips. But soon after, looking at a raise...

Just two more weeks until the flood gates of tournament action are unleashed when the inaugural Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) kicks off for players of all bankroll sizes. Starting April 2nd and lasting until the main event April 12th, players will be able to compete in three buy-in levels of action that won't kill your virtual wallet to be a part of. Be sure to check here at the PokerStarsBlog for all the final table recaps as we crown three champions a night!

As for tonight's action at the $215 buy-in Sunday Warm-up 4,353 easily crushed the $750,000 guarantee again and ramped up the first prize to $112,307,40 and assured five figure paydays to eight different players.

Here's how we arrived at the final nine:

A nice run by Team PokerStars Pro Noah "Exclusive" Boeken (199th place winning $957.66) ended on an open button push with Ah-9s and lara15fiona awaited in the big blind with Ad-Qs. lara15fiona would promptly flop broadway and sent the Dutch pro out of the tournament. With three tables left, not to mention several hours later, lara15fiona would still be using Boeken's chips on a run towards the final table but ultimately finishing a respectable 23rd place ($1,828.26).

Joining lara on this late table run was none other than James "mig.com" Mackey who's 2007 WCOOP main event final table netted him almost $600,000 for third place (report found here) and winning Event #14 ($1,050 NLHE) the same year for another $580,212.50, read about that win here.

Another player who is familiar to late play in big online tournaments, grebnrets86, was sitting near the top of the leaderboard with two tables left, just two weeks ago claimed the runner-up prize in the Sunday Warm-up ($76,014.00).

mig.com would knock out mppowerm in 11th after turning a set of nines against mppowerm's A8o to leap from mid pack to near the top in chip counts. After dishing out some chips and taking them back via steals, mig.com would send ronnyr3 home as the bubble boy when mig.com turned up Ad-Th to ronnyr3's Kh-Qd and neither connected on the Js-Jc-6d-9c-6c board and Mackey's Ace high produced our final table.

Seat 1: don_beppe (2612658 in chips)
Seat 2: Buton77 (12005148 in chips)
Seat 3: Ar Schaflme (4502712 in chips)
Seat 4: grebnrets86 (3781982 in chips)
Seat 5: dj_ponytale (2621644 in chips)
Seat 6: DeacNutt (1684826 in chips)
Seat 7: p5an (2705570 in chips)
Seat 8: mig.com (8973176 in chips)
Seat 9: Quagmire (4642284 in chips)

Buton77 wasted no time to expandhis lead as the fifth hand at the final table he would be responsible for its first knock-out. With blinds at 80,000/160,000 ante 16,000 and folded around to don_beppe in middle position, he would open shove for his 2.5 million chips with pocket eights (8c-8d) and receive a snap call by Buton77...

The qualifiers for PokerStars All Star Week are in the midst of determining who will face off against the Team PokerStars Pros. Here's your daily update of the action from PokerStars' very own Host Bob.

by Host Bob

Prior to the final team selection tournament, there were still six members of the All Star Challengers team that had not secured a match in the All Star Week line-up. With only five spots left to fill, at least one person was going to miss out.

As it turned out, two of those six were finally able to break through. Dutch Supernova Elite busto_soon rode comfortably into third place and selected Isabelle Mercier as his single opponent for the series. The result delighted his legions of railbird fans who had been eagerly awaiting this chance to cheer. 1ofaKind420, a 2008 Yearly TLB Top 50 player, made harder work of qualifying but did enough to take the fifth spot for the day. He will take on Lee Nelson in Sunday's 16:00 ET Stud Hi/Lo match.

The day's other qualifiers are already firmly entrenched in the All Star Week schedule and will be challenging for the team MVP award. The first man to choose from Sunday's games was Pole kAmIkAdZeE. His fourth match for the week will be the potentially crucial final match of the series against Greg Raymer.

Second choice went to the red-hot Supernova Elite 'psimalive', who made it three in a row today - a unique feat during the week's tournaments. He exercised his option on the 12:00 ET match with Vicky Coren. It was another four-time winner that took the remaining match in the schedule. Sumpas will take on Chad Brown in the penultimate match of All Star Week.

Battle commences for real tomorrow, and you can follow all the action here on the blog. The full schedule of matches is as follows:

Monday
Match 1 [NLHE] 12:00 Vicky Coren Vs Sumpas
Match 2 [NLHE] 14:00 Lee Nelson Vs kAmIkAdZeEe
Match 3 [STUD] 16:00 Chad Brown Vs Bookie1978
Match 4 [NLHE] 18:00 Isabelle Mercier Vs PKerBL
Match 5 [NLHE] 20:00 Dennis Phillips Vs bluffblocker

Tuesday
Match 1 [NLHE] 12:00 Katja Thater Vs oblowski512
Match 2 [NLHE] 14:00 Marcin Horecki Vs kAmIkAdZeEe
Match 3 [PLO8] 16:00 Noah Boeken Vs Canuck
Match 4 [NLHE] 18:00 Alex Kravchenko Vs VOLCANO360
Match 5 [NLHE] 20:00 JC Alvarado Vs 666 INRI

Wednesday
Match 1 [NLHE] 12:00 ElkY Vs VOLCANO360
Match 2 [NLHE] 14:00 Victor Ramdin Vs Aryamehr
Match 3 [PLO] 16:00 William Thorson Vs Canuck
Match 4 [NLHE] 18:00 Vanessa Rousso Vs PKerBL
Match 5 [NLHE] 20:00 Chris Moneymaker Vs bluffblocker

Thursday
Match 1 [NLHE] 12:00 ElkY Vs PKerBL
Match 2 [NLHE] 14:00 Vanessa Rousso Vs Sumpas
Match 3 [LHE] 16:00 Ylon Schwartz Vs Aryamehr
Match 4 [NLHE] 18:00 Alex Kravchenko Vs oblowski512
Match 5 [NLHE] 20:00 Chris Moneymaker Vs Gunslinger3

Friday
Match 1 [NLHE] 12:00 Katja Thater Vs GoMukYaSelf
Match 2 [NLHE] 14:00 Andre Akkari Vs bluffblocker
Match 3 [5CD-limit] 16:00 Barry Greenstein Vs Canuck
Match 4 [NLHE] 18:00...

The qualifiers for PokerStars All Star Week are in the midst of determining who will face off against the Team PokerStars Pros. Here's your daily update of the action from PokerStars' very own Host Bob.

by Host Bob

In contrast to the fresh faces produced by Friday's team selection tournament, all five of Saturday's winners were already booked into the All Star Week schedule.

The first match selection fell to Canuck (a name we've been hearing a lot this week), who stuck to his previous form and chose the day's non-NLHE option. He will take on Greg Raymer in an intriguing Limit Omaha Hi/Lo contest. After going zero from four in the early stages of team selection, American Supernova Elite psimalive has produced two wins in two days. He used his second choice on the 14:00 ET match with Team PS Pro captain Victor Ramdin.

kAmIkAdZeEe returned to the winner's circle on Saturday, after three days outside the top five players. His third match of All Star Week will be against Humberto Brenes at 18:00 ET. The result puts him firmly back in the race for the team MVP title.

Also gaining a third spot in the All Star Week itinerary was 2008 WCOOP Main Event final tableist Sumpas. The Swede will come up against 2006 PCA champion Steve Paul-Ambrose.

The prospect of a clash with Joe Hachem awaited the final member of the top five. The honour fell to a Supernova Elite hailing from Germany, 666 INRI. Joe is one of only a handful of players with lifetime live tournament winnings in excess of $10,000,000, so 666 INRI has an intimidating task ahead of him. With just five matches remaining after this game, it could be a crucial clash.

There are now ten players with two or more matches on the All Star Week card - all of whom will be in with a chance of securing the MVP award. The 1-Stamp PokerStars Passport will hinge on who has the talent and the nerve to claim victory in their respective matches.

The fans are currently backing the Pros to win by 996 votes to 699. The Challengers will be determined to prove a lot of people wrong!

The qualifiers for PokerStars All Star Week are in the midst of determining who will face off against the Team PokerStars Pros. Here's your daily update of the action, this time from PokerStars' very own Host Scotty.

by Host Scotty

There were sighs of relief from several members of the All Star Challengers team on Day 5 of team selection, as we saw three new names appear on the All Star Week schedule.
After multiple near misses, lordhuttyx, GoMukYaSelf and psimalive all secured a first match in next week's series.

lordhuttyx squeezed in this time around with the lowest stack, and found himself with a tricky match against Daniel Negreanu in the 20:00 ET slot. GoMukYaSelf has had a tough run in the daily selection tournaments and will be delighted to finally gain a berth in the All Star Week. He held second place when discussions began and decided to take on Friday's opening match against WSOP Razz bracelet winner Katja Thater.

psimalive got to choose right after GoMukYaSelf and selected Team PokerStars Pro's most colorful character as his opponent - Humberto Brenes. Costa Rica's Godfather of Poker has been quite a handful in his appearances in the Weekly TLB challenge matches. He'll be a tricky obstacle to overcome in the 18:00 ET Match 4.

The remaining qualifiers for the day both secured their third matches in All Star Week. Supernova Elite bluffblocker finished this selection tournament with the chiplead and chose to take on a man he has already encountered numerous times at the PokerStars tables - Andre Akkari.

Completing the quintet of Challengers for Friday was Canuck. He kept up his run of taking the non-NLHE option by agreeing to face Barry Greenstein at Limit 5-Card Draw. He will also be seen in the PLO and PLO8 matches of All Star Week.

In qualifying for a third time, bluffblocker and Canuck moved into a three-way tie for the Challengers MVP award with PKerBL. There are five other team members that have two games apiece that will be looking to improve in the last two days of team selection over the weekend.

Come back to the blog to find out which of the Challengers is rising to the occasion, or follow the action for yourself at 16:00 ET on the PokerStars software. The team selection tournaments can be found under the Events > Special tab, alongside the supporter tourneys and the All Star Week matches themselves.