Tom Waters can be forgiven if he hasn’t had much good sleep this week. Waters, partypoker’s Managing Director, has been focusing and, in some cases, sweating the numbers for the partypoker MILLIONS Online which finally got underway on Sunday after nearly 12 months of hype.

“It was very stressful in the run-up to Day 1A because we didn’t know what to expect, really,” said Waters. The opening Day 1 flight eventually drew 1,574 runners to get the online poker operator 39% of the way to its record-smashing $20 million guarantee.

It was in the hours after the 2017 MILLIONS Online that Waters and Rob Yong started thinking about how to make a big splash in 2018. They looked at the numbers and knew that the biggest tournament ever held online came in at just over $12.4 million.

“We did MILLIONS Online last year and it was $5 million and we always had plans to grow it this year and the obvious number to put it to was $10 million,” said Waters. “We started thinking, well wouldn’t it be great to have the biggest ever online poker tournament on partypoker? So we decided to go for it and the next question is well what’s the guarantee and $15 million didn’t feel right for some reason.”

Waters and Yong settled on $20 million and knew that it would take a full year of marketing and the support of nearly every poker player in the world that regularly plays tournaments with a $5,000 or bigger buy-in.

“So yes, we skipped some steps from $5M to $20M, but that’s why – we couldn’t go from $5M to $10M because it wouldn’t set the record,” said Waters. “We wanted to set the record. It doesn’t pay to have intermediate guarantees. It doesn’t really drive anything, so $20M was the number we thought we could achieve and we went for it.”

While the turnout on Day 1A allowed Waters to breathe a little easier, he knew it was going to be the biggest of the starting flights because all the satellite winners to that point were forced to enter Day 1a.

“We had a number [of entrants] in mind as to where we hoped we get for Day 1A,” said Waters. “Well, we had a few numbers actually. There was ‘disaster, we’re in trouble’, there was a number where, ‘okay, we’ve got a chance,’ and there was a number where we would definitely hit from there. We were right in the middle, so it was a pretty decent result. We were happy. It allowed us to get a bit of sleep on Monday night.”

The stress level probably wasn’t helped by overlays at the last three marquee partypoker LIVE stops, including a $925,000 shortage at the recently completed partypoker Caribbean Poker Party in the Bahamas.

“We had a phenomenal amount of support out there and we had a lot of American players that came in – many of them last minute when they saw what they were doing,” said Waters. “We actually felt we got out of a bit of a hole in the Caribbean and we were really happy with the event as a whole. It was positive and, to be fair, we had a lot of conversations with a lot of players in the Caribbean about what we were doing and about MILLIONS Online and that gave us a lot of comfort that this tournament was going to be very popular.”

Day 1B proved to be far less popular. The 484 runners on Thursday pushed the field past the halfway mark of the 4,000 needed to hit the guarantee (without fees), but with three starting flights still to go, Waters isn’t feeling too confident about hitting that number, although he still sees the overall campaign as a success.

“I think right now success is hitting (the guarantee). I think getting 4,000 players in that tournament is a success. I’d think I’d be disappointed with any less, even though it’s not a failure,” said Waters. “I think 3,500 players in that tournament is also a success. We’re relying on a lot of players playing those satellites this week to get anywhere near that number.”

With the finish line in sight, Waters recognizes that the prize pool guarantee that he and Yong came up with many months ago is most likely the biggest guarantee possible given current market conditions.

“I think we’ve found that it probably is $20 million in one tournament. I don’t think you can go any bigger or if you do go bigger it’s going to take more than 12 months of marketing,” said Waters, who doesn’t think the big number guarantee will be going up for 2019. “I think it’s highly unlikely. If miracles happen and we hit a $25 million prize pool this week, then maybe. But then maybe we change and limit the re-entries next year in order to again improve the ecological factor of the tournament. I think it’s extremely unlikely that we grow that guarantee in 2019.”