PokerStars Breaks World Online Tournament Record

The world’s largest online poker room PokerStars has just smashed its own record for the most people simultaneously playing an online poker game after 200,000 people joined its record attempt on Sunday night.
Amazingly, that figure might have been even higher but, as Czech Republic PokerStars.com Manager Ondrej Drebota explained; “the tournament was sold out before it started, but technical limits prevent their number from crossing 200,000.”
The $1 tournament was actually filled to capacity a full three and a half hours before the first cards were dealt and a little after the tournament began all other tourneys were actually stopped for 20 minutes as PokerStars’ server crashed.
Fortunately the competition was also organised to ensure we wouldn’t have to wait for Christmas to determine the winner, with five-minute levels and antes being taken after 20 minutes of play.
Five minutes into the game and 5,000 players had hit the rail and an hour later the field had been halved to 100,000. At the three-hour mark 5,000 remained and it then took a little over seven hours in total before the final hand was played.
With the blinds at 5m/10m, Estonian player “Kaitz20” was dealt Ac-9d and pushed his 119,433,852 stack into the Russian player “sokoluk1991,” who called with As-Qd. The board then ran out Q-J-6-7-10 to hand “sokoluk1991” the victory worth $40,258.83, while “Kaitz20” picked-up $34,000 for his runner-up finish.
The result has been confirmed by a representative from the Guinness World Records, and smashed the previous record set on December 27, 2009 of 149,196 players.
The record attempt was also part of PokerStars’ 10 year anniversary celebrations, with the site being launched for real money on December 12, 2001. The site has continued to grow ever since and in 2010 PokerStars was netting around $1.34 million per day and $1.4 billion annually. The site also dealt its 60 billionth hand on March 31, 2011, with UK player “Pogo650” winning the milestone hand for $102,090.