15 September 2025
It was Douglas "WCGRider" Polk who, in an interview about his challenge against Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, revealed to have been invited by PokerStars for the All-Star Showdown. The first edition of this competition took place in October/November 2012 and was won by Daniel Cates.
The 1st edition of the All-Star Showdown had 8 players:
Alexander Roumeliotis (Sussie Smith)
Alexander Millar (Kanu7)
Benjamin Sulsky (Sauce123)
Tobias Kuder (KTPOKP)
Phil Galfond (MrSweets28)
Isaac Haxton (Ike Haxton)
Daniel Cates (w00ki3z)
Ben Tollerene (Ben86)
Each player paid $100,000 to participate in a NLHE competition which marked the entry of Isaac Haxton in PokerStars Team Online. Daniel Cates defeated Ben Sulsky in heads-up and won the first prize ($550,000).
According to Polk, PokerStars already has a few names lined up:
"Right now, I think the only people that seem to be confirmed are Ike Haxton, jungleman12 and me. I don’t think there is anyone else that has really confirmed. Kanu7 and sauce123 are very likely to play, because they played last year, too. I talked to the German guys (bbvisbadforme, SanIker), but they seemed concerned about it a bit.
Last year, if they had known the exact lineup before, they would have played, because there were not only No-Limit heads-up specialists. The fact that someone like Phil Galfond played made it a little bit softer, as he usually doesn’t play No-limit that much. But I think it depends on how the lineup looks before they commit to it."
