AlphaPlayers congratulates "SwedisRotKuk" for winning the PokerStars weekly $1 million guaranteed tournament on Sunday January 14th - for $187,504! "miamihans" also did quite well, pocketing $136,092 with a final table two-player deal. 7,632 players contributed to a pool of over $1.5 million. Stop by PokerStars on January 23rd as things are sure to be just as exciting in the next $1 million guaranteed tourney. Satellites are available 24 hours a day, including a whole bunch of the popular $11 "shootout" style tournaments that award 2 spots in the $215 events "big one". If you want to challenge a bunch of very, umm, novice players, the $3.30 "triple shootouts" held a couple of times every day aren't a bad opportunity for decent players despite the need to win two 6-handed shootouts and then placing in the top 3 in the third round.

Does the "Big Sunday" tourney at PokerStars start later in the day than you'd like? Then you might want to try the "Sunday Warm-Up", also with a $215 buy-in, which starts at 12:45 ET. The Warm-Up now has a guarantee of $250,000 - although the total pool on January 14th was over $343,000. Congratulations to "allinstevie" for finishing in 1st place for $70,884. "allinstevie" is in Ireland and a perfect example of how the "Warm-Up" may be scheduled better for some folks.

AlphaPlayers hopes that all online poker players in the U.S. remember the companies that stood by them (like PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet and Neteller). All the companies that were so quick to ban U.S. players are guilty of serious overreaction (in every case the law could do them no harm) and should be avoided in the future if they once again try to attract U.S. poker players.

And if you're someone who plays a LOT of poker, you might want to consider moving your operations to PokerStars. Their new VIP program has some pretty lucrative benefits for (very) frequent players.