Christmas Day is usually a time to spend with family, maybe open a few presents and enjoy a good meal. Of course, that’s not always the case for the online poker player who chooses to celebrate the holidays by harnessing a healthy dose of run good and grinding it out on the online tables.

What could be a better present for an online poker player than to take down a massive tournament and collect huge sums of money? For the following few that’s exactly what the holiday had in store for them as we are taking a look back at some of the biggest scores to ever take place on Christmas Day.

The biggest Christmas Day online tournament happened back in 2011 when the holiday landed on a Sunday. So after waking up early for a little celebration, players flocked to their keyboards to participate in the PokerStars $215 Sunday Million. An incredible 6982 players participated that day generating a prize pool of nearly $1.4M. The winner was ‘||Burkeeee!’ who earned $209,464 for the win. PocketFiver Luke ‘LFmagic’ Fields from the UK finished in third place for over $111,000.

Three PocketFivers made the final table. In addition to Fields, Ukraine’s ‘Vadym1’ took home a five-figure score that day.

In 2017, PokerStars hosted a holiday $100 MTT which drew 8688 players and saw ‘onebrl’ cash for $119,112 while PocketFiver Dimitrios ‘JIM_BALLAS’  Ballas finished right behind him for a career-high online score of $116,721. Two other PocketFivers celebrated final table appearances that day as the UK’s ‘LJim4’ picked up a career-high cash for over $36,000 and Ukraine’s ‘Cardanus’ earned $17,741 for his seventh-place finish.

The third largest Christmas Day tournament also took place in 2017 as 484 players piled into a PokerStars $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Tournament. German crusher Arturs ‘Artschgamble’ Scerbaks, who is currently the #1-ranked player in all of Germany, took down that tournament for over $106,000 – a score that was just recently eclipsed by his 2018 Sunday Million Victory.

The prize pool of the holiday $1K was $613,000 and in addition to Scerbaks, there were a host of PocketFivers that picked up big wins. Former #3-ranked player Mark ‘RenRad01’ Darner earned over $12,000 for his final table finish. The final two tables saw players like Ramiro ‘Ramiro’ Petrone, Jerry ‘perrymejsen’ Odeen and ‘girafganger7’ all make deep runs.

The 2011 $215 Sunday Warm that took place on the 25th was the fourth-largest tournament on Christmas. Just like the Sunday Million, if Xmas lands on a Sunday the grinders are going to be there in force. 2700 players created a prize pool of $540,000 and ‘crossthervr’ picked up a huge $85,000 score. Sweden’s Andreas ‘r4ndomr4gs’  Berggren fell in sixth place and earned $18,090 for a nice holiday present. Back then it would have been tough to comprehend that Berggren would eventually be one of online poker’s all-time winningest players currently sitting with nearly $11 million in online earnings.

Topping off the top 5 Christmas Day tournaments was in 2012 for the $1,050 Super Tuesday ($300K guaranteed). 426 online high-rollers ran the prize pool to a massive $426,000. ‘oilmasi77’ took it down for $81,749 besting ‘kersepit’ who walked with just over $60K.

Top 10 Christmas Day Tournaments

PocketFivers have enjoyed taking home their share of holiday prize pools over the years. Here are those players who have continually made their Christmas bright.

PocketFives Top 20 Christmas Day Winners