Poker Stars has succeeded in once again holding the biggest online poker tournament, based on the number of players registered. There were 200,000 in all, this time, and there would have been more if technical issues hadn’t capped the potential pool at 200,000, the target number to set a new record, according to Ondrej Drebota, Manager of the Czech Republic PokerStars.com. The previous record was set by Poker Stars as well, on December 2009, for 149,196 players.
The ceremony celebrating this latest world record was held at the site of the EPT Prague, which is taking place now. Poker Stars’ WCOOP Radio broadcast the tournament live, which took place at the same time as the world record ceremony, Sunday the 4th of December, 2011.
When the 200,000 player tournament started, it crashed the PokerStars servers, causing all the other tournaments taking place at the site at that time to be held up for 20 minutes.
The game lasted seven hours and change. First place went to a player going by “sokoluk1991”, who, for his $1 buy-in, took down a $40,258.83 first prize. Runner-up, for $34,000, was “Kaitz20”.
This event also marked the start of the 10th Anniversary festivities taking place at PokerStars throughout the rest of the year. It features ten promotions in all, eight of which have already been detailed earlier in these pages. The last two 10th Anniversary promotions – special cash prizes for the Battle of the Planets Sit ‘n’ Gos and a 72 Billionth Hand bonus – will be featured tomorrow.