Online poker site PokerStars.com closed out 2008 with a special tournament that has been recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records for setting a new mark for the number of players taking part at the same time.
PokerStars.com revealed that 35,000 players pre-registered to compete in its special $11 buy-in tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $500,000. The event took place over the last weekend of December and broke its previous record set in July of 2007 by some 15,000 players.
The action took place on 876 tables with 8,750 competitors going home with a monetary prize. The final two players, ‘Stan34Powa’ and ‘Meiky777’, went heads-up through 57 hands with the lead constantly changing. However, it was ‘Stan34Powa’ that eventually outlasted everyone to triumph and take home a $30,000 top prize. ‘Meiky777’ went away $20,000 richer while third placed ‘RumRed14’ received $15,000.
Fourth placed ‘Goldman007’ took away $10,000 for his troubles followed by ‘Nekochan48’ with $7,500 and ‘Gustave44’ with $5,000. In seventh was ‘N0Ideahh’ who walked away with $3,500 while eighth placed ‘AlePolice’ received $2,500 followed by ‘One_Timee’ with $2,000 and ‘FuFish’ with $1,500.
“We may be in the middle of PokerStars.com’s World Record Week but this weekend was where the biggest action happened,” read a statement from the Isle of Man-licensed online poker room.
“In just the span of one day, we saw the world’s biggest ever poker tournament, the biggest ever Sunday Million, the biggest ever Sunday Warm-Up and more than $12 million in real cash tournament prizes awarded to PokersStars.com players.
“Oh, and while we’re mentioning broken records, we should also mention that Sunday…we saw the biggest number of people ever logged into PokerStars.com. As you can see…the number topped out at more than 250,500 players.”
