One of the top online poker sites reached a milestone last week when Poker Stars.com recorded for the first time a total of 100 000 players online simultaneously at its site.
Poker Stars spokesmen gave the event some historical perspective by revealing that less than three years ago, the company broke the 10,000-player mark for the first time. Now, ten times as many players and games are going around the clock and around the world.
Another interesting fact from the spokesmen: The world’s largest land-based casino has 243 poker tables. On a typical weekday evening, Poker Stars.com has up to forty times as many games on the go.
“I started playing online at PokerStars back in 2001,” said Joe Hachem, the reigning World Series of Poker champion.
“Back then, I recognised many of the opponents I regularly played against. Now, each time I log on at PokerStars.com, it’s like walking into the world’s largest sports stadium. There might be 100,000 people there. Players are logged in from countries all around the world. It’s amazing. I don’t think anyone could have possibly foreseen how popular poker would become.”
To celebrate the event, PokerStars.com is introducing an unprecedented tournament guarantee. Beginning February 27, all Sunday afternoon no-limit hold’em tournaments – with buys-ins of either $215 or $530 – will pay out at least $1,000,000 in prize money to the top finishers. PokerStars also offers a quarterly tournament with a $1050 buy-in.
The new million-dollar tournaments will be accessible to all poker players, regardless of their bankroll size. While many players buy-in directly, not all entrants will pay the full fee to enter. Every day, PokerStars offers many different kinds of satellites to the big weekly events, with buy-ins starting at $3. Other satellite qualifiers cost nothing more than frequent player points acquired from playing regularly at the site.
Weekly tournaments organised by the company have been setting new records recently. And spokesmen claim that one week ago the $215 buy-in Sunday afternoon no-limit hold’em tournament attracted a whopping 5,326 players – nearly equal to the record-setting number of the main event at last year’s World Series of Poker.
During the month of January, a total of $140 000 000 was awarded to players in all tournament prize pools combined for the month, an extraordinary figure likely to be eclipsed soon, say spokesmen.