Milestone For Online Poker Room Pokerstars
Published: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
100.000 ONLINE POKER PLAYERS MILESTONE FOR POKERSTARS
And a million dollar online poker tourney to celebrate
One of the top online poker rooms reached a milestone last week when Pokerstars
recorded for the first time a total of 100 000 online poker players logged
on simultaneously at its poker gambling site.
Pokerstars 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, 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 is introducing an unprecedented online poker
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 online poker 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.
