Christopher "MAKKAPAKKK" Johnson Wins Opening Event in the 2021 XL Spring Series for $9,884
It took almost 9.5 hours for Christopher "MAKKAPAKKK" Johnson to make their way through the field of 1,353 entries to take down the top prize of $9,884 in XL Spring #1 - $50,000 Opening Event. There was $67,650 in total in the prize pool, an increase of more than 35% over the $50,000 guarantee.
Johnson, from West Midlands, United Kingdom, essentially went wire-to-wire on the final table with the chip lead. He started the final table as the only player with more than 5 million chips, and never lost the lead for any substantial period of time.
This score puts Johnson's 888poker wins over $50,000, but he has nearly $2.5 million in online winnings according to PocketFives, mostly from PokerStars where he has booked more than $2 million in wins. His biggest online score came from a Sunday Million win in 2014 worth nearly $200,000, and today's score puts his lifetime online earnings at just over $2.49 million.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christopher "MAKKAPAKKK" Johnson | United Kingdom | $9,884 |
| 2 | Panxetillo | Andorra | $7,225 |
| 3 | JacobMitro | Canada | $5,311 |
| 4 | Vimtefeedar | Brazil | $3,903 |
| 5 | LazBanker | United Kingdom | $2,889 |
| 6 | flockystern | Russia | $2,151 |
| 7 | jonahindi | United Kingdom | $1,617 |
| 8 | Isitaskes | Lithuania | $1,224 |
| 9 | AcidAscorbic | Brazil | $934 |
The Day's Action
Action was busy at the registration desk while it was open, and they ended up with a total of 1,353 entries. That was composed of 986 unique players combining for 367 rebuys and generated a prize pool of $67,650, significantly better than the $50,000 promised by 888poker.
The only ambassador in action today was Brazil's Vivian "vivi.888." Saliba. She had an up and down day, holding a big stack for portions of the post registration play. She managed to survive through to the money bubble, but ended with a min-cash in 149th place for $135.
Play went very quickly after the bubble burst, and within two hours they were down to 27 players on the final three tables. Johnson, the eventual winner, was in the top ten at that point, but just barely, and he was the only one in the top ten with less than 1 million in chips.
Johnson really started his run when he found a great spot against "t0nyshark" to get it down to the final two tables. Johnson woke up with aces against ace-king and held to bust the player and get a stack of nearly 3 million chips.
With just 11 players left, Johnson had chipped up to second place, behind the eventual runner-up "Panxetillo", but there was really nothing in it. Less than 50,000 chips separated their 5.8 million chip stacks at that point, but by the time they hit the final table a few minutes later, Johnson was more than 3 million in front.
He kept chipping up, eliminating "jonahindi" in seventh place for nearly 10 million chips. "Panxetillo" briefly took the lead while play was five-handed, but Johnson quickly chipped up to more than 15 million after eliminating "JacobMitro" in third.
That gave Johnson the 2:1 chip lead going into heads-up play, and he never surrendered the lead. The final hand was a roller coaster that saw Johnson get it in good with queens against the 
for "Panxetillo", only to see "Panxetillo" turn two pair. Johnson rivered the Broadway straight though and took it down.
"Panxetillo" won $7,225 for second place, while Johnson picked up almost $10,000 for the win, which puts his total earnings on 888poker over $58,000, and puts him within $10,000 of the $2.5 million mark in online winnings overall.