The GGPoker Spring Festival, the poker site’s biggest series ever, is now in the books with more nearly $180 million paid out over three weeks. And it’s just the beginning of what’s to come for the poker site promoted by Daniel Negreanu.
Negreanu isn’t the only big name affiliated with GGPoker. Fedor Holz, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, and others represent the site, and the affiliation with high-profile players is clearly paying off.
Starting on May 1, GGPoker will begin a $100 million guaranteed WSOP Super Circuit Series. Then, come August, the poker site will, for the second straight year, host a WSOP Online Bracelet Series with 33 gold bracelets up for grabs.
With the live World Series of Poker in Las Vegas on the shelf until the fall, WSOP.com and GGPoker will fill the void left over the summer. But before that happens, we take a look back at the site’s biggest series ever, which recently concluded.
Markus Leikkonen caps off GGPoker Spring Festival with a bang
The GGPoker Spring Festival Main Event, a $10,300 buy-in tournament, was quite a success. Markus Leikkonen would certainly agree. The Finnish poker pro shipped the event, beating out a field of 347, to earn a $651,821 payday in his final event of the series.
The series began early in the month with 2020 WSOP Main Event champion Damian Salas taking down the $5,250 Bounty Hunters Main Event for $103,125. Salas would continue his hot streak by winning a PokerStars SCOOP event last week for another $263,023.
The reigning poker world champion was far from the only big-name player to take down a GGPoker Spring Festival title. David Peters, Stephen Chidwick, Seth Davies, Connor Drinan, and Mikita Badziakousi, were all among the champions in the three-week series.
Six players, including five champions, won more than $1 million each in single events throughout the series. The biggest winner of them all was Joakim Anderrson, who shipped the $10,300 buy-in, $10 million guaranteed Super Millions for $1,537,605. Anderrson, a Swedish pro with more than $5.3 million in online tournament cashes, beat out 1,089 players for the biggest win of his career, and the biggest score of the GGPoker Spring Festival.
The top performer of the series, if we aren’t factoring in total money won, was Lev “LeaveMeAlone” Gottlieb, a Mexican pro who took down three high rollers and cashed in two other events. For the series, he cashed for more than $1.1 million. Gottlieb also won a WSOP bracelet last summer on GGPoker for $276,393 in the $10,000 Short Deck No-Limit Hold’em Championship.
