That's $500,000 more than the total prize money for the tournament and dwarfs the winner's share of about $250,000.
The men's and women's singles champions will earn 20 percent more this year than last (their total prize will be 1.5 million euros, about $1.9 million), but the biggest increase in prize money will go to the 112 players who will bow out in the second, third and fourth rounds of the men's and women's tournaments.
After giving out $1 million in prizes its first two years, and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars each time, Millionaire Chess is not able to live up to its name this year: It is offering no more than $510,000 and the total prize fund might be as little as $306,000, depending on the number of entries it receives.
The issue of prize money is also of particular concern at the Festival, where the total prize fund is more than £3m.
On the undercard are seven more top-class races, bringing the total prize money on offer on Saturday to just over $26 million.
Just last week, the fourth international world championship for the video game Defense of the Ancients 2 was held at Seattle's Key Arena; the total prize pool reached more than ten million dollars.
As it turns out, today is the final day of The International 4, a Dota 2 — that's a video game, in case you are quite behind — tournament that has a total prize pool of more than $10 million.
In August 2010, Moon joined Chris Moneymaker and Jonathan Duhamel in hosting the Mega Stack Series XVII, a live poker tournament at Foxwoods Resort Casino that drew 2,200 participants and had a total prize pool of more than $1 million.
It is the second $500,000 increase announced since last year's tournament, bringing the total prize package to $1 million more than a year ago and $1.5 million higher than the 1998 purse of $2.5 million.
Whichever can take down the best of five series will walk away with more than $5 million, or around half of the total prize pool.
