2017 partypokerLIVE Millions Disk Till Dawn Main Event (£5,000 buy-in) drew a field of 1,240 players for a prize pool of £6,017,395. The final table of 8 included not less than 2 female players. Maria Lampropulos (Argentina) and Katie Swift (UK) started the final day of play in 3rd and 4th place.
Lampropulos had a good start and she was responsible for the first elimination (Neel Murthy) about 1 hour into the final table. Things didn't go as well for Swift though, as she was eliminated in 7th place just half an hour after Murthy exited the tournament.
Lampropulos was unstoppable once the final table was down to its last 4 players. The fact is that she eliminated her final 3 competitors! When heads-up play started, Lampropulos had 617 million in chips to Jacob Mulhern's 630 million. Lampropulos was open to discuss a deal but Mulhern wasn't interested because he was confident he could win the £1 million first-place prize.
Lampropulos had a decent chip lead when the final hand of the tournament occurred - about 2 hours after 1-on-1 battle started. Lampropulos raised to 20m and Mulhern re-raised to 50m. Lampropulos shoved her stack of 840m. Mulhern called with AQ and was up against KK.
The flop came out 963 and Lampropulos was still ahead. The 5 on the turn left Mulhern drawing for a 3-outer on the river. The 4 completed the board and Jacob Mulhern was out in second, probably with some regrets of not accepting a deal earlier on.
Lampropulos received the top prize of £1,000,000, which is her by far biggest tournament cash to date!
"It really feels like a magic moment I'm in right now," she told PokerNews after her win. "I'm a little tired after such a difficult final table, but tomorrow I'll realize what I did. He didn't want to make a deal. He was convinced that he could win. Perhaps because I am a woman and he didn't want to deal with a woman, but I trusted in my game, I just thought ‘let's play.'"
Final Table Payouts
Maria Lampropulos -1,000,000
Jacob Mulhern - 650,000
Jeremy Pantin - 450,000
Mateusz Rypulak - 320,000
Jon Spinks - 220,000
Stephen Chidwick - 150,000
Katie Swift - 100,000
Neel Murthy - 72,395