With humble origins from December 2001, PokerStars began from scratch a decade ago to become the leader of online poker. All the staff would get excited each time the number of connected players would reach a landmark figure. After one year of being in the business, they reached the 100 number mark of players playing at the same time. Another year later, everyone was ecstatic when 10,000 players played simultaneously at their site. The numbers grew continually until reaching one hundred thousand players in 2006 and two hundred thousand players in 2008. By early 2011, the figures show that there were more than 250,000 players that simultaneously played online at stars. It must be noted that these figures show the number of players all over the whole world who are playing poker at the same time.
Aside from breaking records in the number of players playing simultaneously, PokerStars has also broken many other of their own records. They regularly host record breaking tournaments featuring the largest number of participants in the history of poker. Probably the most famous of all their tournaments is the one with the tiny $1 buyin. On July 19, 2009 this event attracted 65,000 players. They broke their own record on December 27 of that same year when 149,196 participants signed up for the event with only a $1 entry fee.
It was only appropriate that their 10th anniversary last year would also break many records. In celebration of this 10 year milestone, PokerStars had organized 10 special events which run from November 1 to December 17, 2011. For the $1 tournament, they set up a maximum limit of 200,000 players and added $50,000 for a guaranteed $250,000 prize pool.
Registration was quickly filled out and completed over 3 hours before the competition was to get started. A representative from the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that PokerStars had set a new record with the largest online poker tournament ever. This event was won by a Russian player sokoluk1991 who got $40,258 as part of a 3 way deal.
Probably one of the best winning stories in the series of tournaments was the one of 24 year old Kyle “First-Eagle” Weir from Canada. Before joining the tournament, his biggest monetary win was less than $40,000; he was unemployed and regularly played poker for extra cash. He was just one of the 62,116 players who joined the Sunday Million. Then his life was turned upside down when he was announced the poker winner of the biggest online poker tournament in history (note that large means the field, and big means the prize pool). Weir walked away with $1,146,574 for his feat in achieving just the right balance of skills and bankroll management. PokerStars ended 2011 with a bang and expects 2012 to be grander than ever.
