PokerStars has a knack for shocking the online poker community with revolutionary promotions, innovative tournaments, and some of the biggest player fields and cash prizes to ever to take place online. On the second Sunday of this December, the PokerStars Sunday $200K featured an $11 buy-in that registered 25,000 players and awarded first place with $25,000, a very large tournament in its own right. What made that tournament notable was the buy-in cost to prize ratio.
But PokerStars visionaries have since envisioned something even bigger. A tournament event larger than anything prior will take place at PokerStars.com on December 28, 2008 at 3:30 p.m. ET. This tournament will guarantee a $500K prize pool with the same $11 buy-in, to be the largest online cash tournament ever, in terms of the substantial player field. PokerStars has capped the number of registrants at 35,000, and is hoping for 30,000. PokerStars has notified the Guinness Book of World Records to record the historical event, if in fact everything goes according to plan, so that PokerStars and their players can officially hold the title of “Largest Cash Poker Tournament to Ever Be Played Online.”
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As of Sunday, December 21st, 2008, there were just shy of 6,000 players registered, and after checking back thirty minutes later, 30+ more had signed up. However, if they don’t make their player quota, they won’t have a record breaker. It seems though that once online poker players catch news of this rare opportunity to say, after it’s all over, “I played in that tournament!” they will flock to PokerStars and fork up the small price of $11. Based on past success, though, the online poker room should have no problem filling the seats. If you are looking for the tournament in the PokerStars lobby, go to “Tourney” then “Special.” Then if you sort by “Game,” it should be about the 11th tournament listed under the name, “Guinness World Record Attempt.”
The tournament is set up for 10-minute level intervals with 10-player tables. All participants will begin the tournament with 3,000 chips. First place can anticipate $30,000, and the top 8,750 places will cash.
It wasn’t too long ago that PokerStars broke the record for creating the largest field for any big-buy-in online or live tournament back in March 2007. For the one year birthday of the Sunday Million, they guaranteed $1.5 million and drew a historical field of 10,508 players. The prize pool amassed to $2 million, also a new record for online tournament history, being the biggest prize pool, live or online, that wasn’t part of a larger series like the World Championship of Online Poker or the World Series of Poker. This was the same month that they achieved a total membership of 5 million players and surpassed their own 2006 Guinness World Record of 100,000 players, for the most number of players ever online simultaneously when they had 150,000 players logged in at the same time in 2008. Prior to all of this though, PokerStars was the first online poker room to guarantee $1 million in one tournament because they had the players to do it.
PokerStars has achieved many other milestone record titles (too many to list here), but back in March of 2007, PokerStars Poker Room Manager Lee Jones admitted that "breaking records is not something we planned.” Now it’s something that defines them and drives the site to grow itself, while at the same time, expanding the realm of online poker, in general.
Register by entering Poker Stars marketing code PAWSUB465 and you will receive a 100% bonus and invites to restricted freerolls.
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