GGPOKER

GGPoker spends most of the year chasing records. For one month each winter, it mostly gives money away.

The Winter Giveaway Series ran from December 15 through January 15, a holiday-long schedule built on $100 million in guarantees with another $5 million in free cash bolted on top. The promise was right there in the banner that ran above it: everyone’s a winner. For the players who logged on between the turkey and the fireworks, it came closer to true than these things usually do. It has become GGPoker’s answer to the quietest stretch of the poker year, a month of holiday-themed tournaments run precisely when the live rooms go dark and most of the circuit goes home.

Free Money for the Holidays

The giveaway was not just a slogan. Event after event, GGPoker added cash straight into the prize pool on top of the guarantee, $50,000 here, $25,000 there, a few thousand on the smaller ones, money that existed for no reason beyond the season. One Boxing Day event simply had five percent added to its pool, a holiday dividend for showing up, and across roughly thirty tournaments the free cash never stopped arriving. And the buy-ins stayed low enough that anyone could pull up a chair.

The $11 Happy New Year tournament drew a staggering 114,890 entrants and built a $1.2 million pool, with ‘ys93’ taking $79,262 of it. Santa’s Sled Bounty Turbo, a $25 event, pulled 86,801 players. Even a $5 Flip & Go gathered nearly 23,000 entries and paid ‘lucky_evan’ $30,448. This was poker with the velvet rope taken down.

The bigger buy-ins ran right alongside the cheap ones. The $365 Sunday Snow GIANT crowned ‘Loyalrkepayr’ for $77,071, and the schedule climbed all the way to a $525 Bounty High Roller. Whatever a player wanted to spend, there was a holiday tournament pitched at exactly that number, with a little of GGPoker’s money already sitting in the pool before the first hand was dealt.

Busted, and Rich Anyway

The series leaned hard on mystery bounties, and they delivered the beautiful chaos they always do. The Season’s Greetings opener set the standard on day one. A player called ‘curiousgeorge3’ busted in 210th place for $300.93 in prize money, then opened a $100,000 mystery bounty. The champion that night, ‘ihop’, took home less than a third of that.

It kept happening. On Christmas Day, ‘Inauspuntos’ went out 233rd for $232 and unwrapped $61,000. In the Omaholic Mystery Ball, ‘SteveMandanda’ turned a $108 buy-in and a 16th-place finish into $78,186. In the Crystal Ball, 226th place was worth $59,326 to ‘focuschicken’. Four separate times over the holidays, the biggest score in the room went to a player who had already been knocked out of it. That same Omaholic Mystery Ball spread the wealth further still: 110th-place ‘cafu88’ walked away with $71,476 in bounties without ever reaching the final table either.

The Bounty Hunters

Between the mystery bounties and the giveaways, the straightforward knockout events kept a scoreboard of their own. In the $215 Bounty Hunters Holiday Roller, ‘sebesQuee’ stacked $63,112 in bounties on top of a $46,911 first prize out of a $1.56 million pool, one of the richest single hauls of the month. The $525 Bounty High Roller, the priciest seat on the calendar, went to ‘Frdaa’ for $32,765 and another $38,857 in knockouts. Even the mass-field turbos paid real money once the bounties were tallied, with Santa’s Sled sending ‘BEL!EVER’ home with close to $77,000 all told. For a series dressed up in tinsel, it played for serious stakes.

The Grand Finale

The series saved its largest pool for last. The Grand Finale drew 15,516 entrants and built a $4,510,340 prize pool against a $3 million guarantee, the giveaway topping up the difference one final time. It came down to a heads-up deal between ‘Zadni vezni’ and ‘Graeme Putt’, who banked $338,620.49 and $325,621.31, with ‘belatheboss’ collecting $222,971.58 for third. After a month of five-dollar Flip and Gos and hundred-thousand-dollar envelopes, the series ended the way it began: with far more money on the table than anyone had guaranteed.

The Marquee Results

The events and scores that defined the 2024-25 Winter Giveaway, at a glance:

Event	Buy-in	Entries	Winner	Top Prize
Winter Giveaway Grand Finale	$250	15,516	‘Zadni vezni’ (deal)	$338,620.49
Happy New Year	$11	114,890	‘ys93’	$79,262.82
Sunday Snow GIANT	$365	1,850	‘Loyalrkepayr’	$77,071.44
Season’s Greetings Opener [Mystery Bounty]	$125	9,098	‘ihop’	$61,409.66 (top bounty $100,000)
Omaholic Mystery Ball [Mystery Bounty]	$108	9,299	‘Lao Jian’	$55,270.65 (top bounty $78,186)
Bounty Hunters Holiday Roller	$215	7,591	‘sebesQuee’	$46,911.30 (+$63,112 bounty)
Santa’s Sled Bounty Turbo	$25	86,801	‘BEL!EVER’	$43,655.78 (+$32,829 bounty)
Christmas Day [Mystery Bounty]	$125	6,221	‘king_kong21’	$43,582.13 (top bounty $61,000)
Flip & Go Ho Ho Ho Friday	$5	22,925	‘lucky_evan’	$30,448.71

That is the trick of the Winter Giveaway. It takes the quietest stretch of the poker calendar, the days when the live rooms empty out and everyone heads home for the holidays, and makes it the loudest one going. Free cash, enormous fields, and the occasional stranger busting in 210th to win a hundred grand. Everyone’s a winner is a stretch. But more of them were than usual.

 

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About the Author: Shawn Altbaum has been writing and editing in the online gaming industry since 2007, reporting live from the WSOP Main Event and conducting interviews with professional players. An active poker player, he combines industry expertise with firsthand knowledge of the games he covers. He currently serves as Global Head of Copywriting at NSUS Group, overseeing brand voice and content strategy across GGPoker and GGVegas.