PokerStars 10th Anniversary tournament breaks record

In its latest bid to topple the record for the largest online poker tournament in the history of the game, PokerStars (which is the current record-holder) ran a special $1 tournament this past Sunday with a guaranteed prize-pool of $250,000 for its 10^th Anniversary celebration. This would be the first attempt for the site to eclipse a previous record since Black Friday cut them off from the US market, but as you will see this had little effect on the overall turnout.

The tournament demolished the previous record set back in December of 2009, when 149,156 players registered for a similar $1 buy-in tournament. Sunday’s turnout was so high that the 200,000 player cap imposed by PokerStars (the site’s software is apparently unable to handle a tournament any larger) was hit over 3 hours before the start of the tournament -who knows just how many people would have registered by the close of late registration???

With a big pay-jump for first-place thanks to a $50k guarantee to the winner a deal was made between the remaining three players at the final table that saw the eventual earn just over $40k, the runner-up pocketed $34k, and the 3^rd place finisher over $25k -not too bad for a $1 entry-fee!

PokerStars will next attempt eclipsing the Sunday Million record as their 10^th Anniversary celebration continues on. The site has announced its plans for a Sunday Million for the ages on December 11^th, with a guaranteed prize-pool of $10 million, with a $2 million guarantee for the winner.

When the tournament was first announced on the PokerStars blog Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu was quoted as saying: “Amazing that it’s been 10 years! I’m very proud of my association with PokerStars, and this December’s 10th Anniversary Celebration is going to be a doozy… There will be tons of cash prizes for bankrolls of all sizes, plus giveaways and a $10 million Sunday Million event.”

Here is a look at the complete final table payouts from the tournament which paid a total of 12,150 players, and took around seven hours to complete:

Here is a look at the final table payouts from the tournament:

• 1st: sokoluk1991 (Russia) — $40,258.83*
• 2nd: Kaitz20 (Estonia) — $34,000*
• 3rd: King-2-Z (United Kingdom) — $25,741.17*
• 4th: tristan2287 (Spain) — $10,000
• 5th: RaZorFaZoR (Germany) — $8,000
• 6th: casasola10 (Costa Rica) — $6,500
• 7th: Bjoornkjaer (Denmark) — $5,250
• 8th: pumata13 (Bulgaria) — $4,000
• 9th: herbert68 (Germany) — $3,000
• 10th: Garin4o (Ukraine) — $2,250

*Three-way deal