To win a major poker tournament is one thing, but to win it two times—in the span of six months, no less—puts a player into a whole new category of professionalism. Online poker pro Rob Tinnion, known around the PokerStars community as “robtinnion”, has done just that, winning his second PokerStars Sunday Million last weekend.
As anyone who’s traversed the virtual felt a few times will tell you, the PokerStars Sunday Million is the biggest regularly scheduled event in the online poker realm. It happens every weekend, and guarantees a minimum of $1,000,000 in the prize pool. Just making it into the bubble is a feat in and of itself, with an average of 6,900 contenders in the field throughout 2015; about 1,000 of which can expect a payout of some size.
OnlinePokerRealMoney.co.uk tries to dispel some legal confusions stemming from passage of George Bush's UIGEA of 2006 . Federal status seems to depend on interpretation of the wire act and other laws which were crafted many years ago and which remained high level in nature. The United Kingdom has much clearer laws including their own real money gambling commission .
For 25 year old UK poker pro Rob Tinnion, he didn’t just make the cut. He earned top honors in the February 8th rendition of the PokerStars Sunday Million, scooping a $200,136 payday for his efforts. On August 31st, 2014, Tinnion harvest the same result, bankrolling $213,994.
Tinnion now joins a very small group of players who’ve managed to take down the world’s most prestigious, weekly online poker event. With the addition of “robtinnion” to the list, only 7 players have now accomplished such a prolific achievement. Even more significant, however, is that Rob Tinnion pulled off both victories without ever succumbing to a final table, pot-chopping deal.
Tinnion told PokerStars that when the tournament ended in the wee hours of Monday morning, his parents awoke to a great deal of noise coming from his bedroom. Apparently that didn’t rattle them, though, as it happens quite often.
“They knew from past experience this was a very polarizing result,” Tinnion explained. “Either I had just lost a massive pot in a high equity situation, or I had just won a lot.” When their 25 year old son walked downstairs with a big smile on his face, they knew there was very good reason for it.
Tinnion admitted that he had been in a bit of a slump recently, and it caused him to back off some of the higher buy-in events he would normally have played. He went into the PokerStars Sunday Million with no other tournaments open, allowing him to focus solely on the action at hand, and it paid off big time.
The UK online poker pro was on the high-end of the stacks for most of the tournament and went into the final table with a well-padded lead, but it didn’t last long. It wasn’t until the tournament dropped the 3-handed that Tinnion had regained the highest stack.
Talks of a pot chop had already begun at 4-handed, and they continued all the way down to heads-up. As “robtinnion” prepared to face off with “ministerborg”—the UK poker pro holding a little more than 2:1 ratio of chips—his opponent offered another deal; $168k for Rob, $160k for himself. “No,” replied Tinnion. “$200k for me.”
Rob was right. When the final hand played out, giving both players 10’s over 6’s, Tinnion’s Ace-kicker sealed the deal.
“It’s still extremely surreal and I still chuckle to myself when I remember it,” said Tinnion. “To be in a very small group of people who have won it twice, and part of an even smaller group without chopping, is very rewarding.”
After spending just three years playing online poker seriously, Rob Tinnion has amassed over $1.4 million in tournament play; the majority of which ($1.169mm) came from PokerStars events. And with around 30% of his overall winnings coming from those two PokerStars Sunday Million routings, there’s no way anyone can say the 25 year old Brit got lucky.