PokerStars is not only the largest online poker site online, but is also the only one of the three online poker sites to overcome Black Friday and continue to bring in impressive results. The online poker site also held the record for the largest online poker tournament in history, and just this month they decided to attempt to break their own world record once again. The site placed a cap on the tournament, which featured a $1 buy-in and $250k in the guaranteed prize pool. The numbers were so high that they brought in an incredible 200,000 players, which is even more amazing considering the fact that they were in the United States market when they originally broke the record.
As if the 200k players wasn’t impressive enough, take into consideration that this number was hit more than three hours before the tournament actually began. Based on the old numbers, if PokerStars was still in the US market, there is a very realistic chance that this number could have hit 300k in total players, which would have been absurd.
The old record that PokerStars set was 149,196 players, and was set around two years ago, back on December 27, 2009. It was seen that this number was actually passed in the pre-registration period, many days before the tournament even began. It’s not much of a surprise that the players were eliminated incredibly fast from this tournament, as many players went for the “go all-in and either double up, or go home” method, since it was only a $1 tournament. This meant that the players were in the cash only 2 and a half hours into the event. This meant there was 12,150 players left, and the first payouts were $4. The first place prize was set at $50k, but the players had a bit of work to do in order to outlast 12k more players.
While it was a nice feeling for everyone who made the money to get into it so quickly, they weren’t nearly as fortunate when it came down to finding an eventual winner. It took five additional hours for a champion to be found, and a deal was actually made over three handed play as well. The deal gave the first place winner $40,258.83, and he played by the name of sokoluk1991. Second place went to Kaitz20, and this player took down $34k for their efforts. Third place was a player who played under the name King-2-Z, and they took home $25,741.17. Not a bad deal for just a $1 investment eh?