Guinness World Record Tournament
Pokerstars, the largest online poker room, has announced they will attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the largest online poker tournament. Pokerstars is already the record holder so I think this is just a preemptive measure to ensure that Full Tilt Poker doesn’t try and wrest the title away in the near future. Pokerstars and Full Tilt have virtually been at war in 2009. They are the two biggest kids on the block so this was eventually bound to happen.
Pokerstars Vs Full Tilt – July, 2009
In July of this year Full Tilt Poker attempted to beat the World Record of 35,000 players in a single tournament which was held by Pokerstars. This tournament was part of their 5 year anniversary promotion and they made no secret of what they were attempting. Seeing this the people in charge at Pokerstars decided to hastily put together a tournament on the same day.
Fulltilt easily beat the 35,000 player record but Pokerstars surpassed them a few hours later when their tournament had a playing field of 65,000 players. In Full Tilt’s defense though at least their tournament had a $10 buy-in. The record breaking tournament at Poker Stars had a but-in of $1.
New Guinness World Record Attempt – December 27th, 2009
For $1 you can take part in a historic tournament at Pokerstars. I am predicting that Pokerstars will close registration when they reach 100,000 entries. Getting 100,000 players to sign-up for a tournament is the easy part. The only real challenge for Pokerstars will be in keeping their software from lagging or other techincal errors from occurring. Here are the incentives Pokerstars is offering for this event:
- $300,000 Guaranteed Prize Pool – Based on their traffic, which has been growing extremely well this year, Pokerstars could probably get 150,000-200,000 players to play in this event. I estimated 100,000 because they will probably want to play it safe. Either way though the overlay for this tournament is going to be huge, at least $150,000. The first place prize is guaranteed to be at least $50,000 and the tournament will pay the top 30,000 players.
- Certificate Of Participation – Since this tournament will be an official Guinness World Record attempt each player will receive a certificate of participation from Pokerstars. I’m not sure what this certificate is going to say/look like but I know that I’ll be framing it and putting it on the wall.
Current Status & Registration Info
The tournament will be starting in 4 days and 20 hours (12/27/09 @ 14:45 ET) and already has 35,000 registrations. If you don’t have any cash in your account and are tapped out from Xmas you can still play in this event. Pokerstars is running numerous satellite sit’n'go’s that cost either $.10 or 5 FPP’s.
How To Sign-up:
Step 1 – Visit Pokerstars & download the free software
Step 2 – Enter the Pokerstars marketing code PSP11820 during registration
Step 3 – Enter the Pokerstars bonus code STARS600 when you deposit for a 100% match on your first 3 deposits up to $600.
Step 4 – Click on the “Tournament” tab in the software and than the “Special Tab”. The tournament is titled “World Record” and is in pink.