PokerStars And Full Tilt Poker Battle For Guinness Record

Over the past weekend, poker players had a difficult decision to make, with the ability to say that they were a part of a Guinness World Record on the line.

Both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars ran tournaments on Sunday in an attempt to set the record for the largest online poker tournament ever. At stake was the opportunity to submit their claim to the official statistician of world records, Guinness World Records (formerly known as the Guinness Book of World Records) for the largest online poker tournament ever. Unofficially that claim was already held by PokerStars with a tournament from December 2008 that drew in 35,000 players.

Each tournament featured extra money added to the prize pool by each respective site. PokerStars doubled the prize pool from whatever amount of players signed up to take part of the $1 buy in tournament. Full Tilt Poker, on the other hand, put a guaranteed $500,000 on the line for its $5 buy in tournament. With each tournament starting at nearly the same time, players had some difficult decisions to make as to whether to multi-event or to take a shot at one or the other.

PokerStars was the first to take their shot and they set a high bar for Full Tilt Poker to overcome. By Saturday, pre-registrations passed the 35K mark that would be required to set the new record and the numbers continued to climb as the tournament drew near. By the time the tournament started slightly past 2PM (Eastern Time), 65,000 players were on the virtual felt for the event and PokerStars doubled the prize pool to offer $130,000 to the 16,250 players who could survive to cash out of the tournament.

Surprisingly, the tournament only lasted ten hours as PokerStars preferred to stick with its traditional ten minute levels and starting stacks of 2000 chips. In the end, it was “004 license” who was able to outlast “I_SCORPIO_I” to take the championship of the Guinness World Record Attempt Tournament. For his efforts, “004 license” took home $13,000 and “I_SCORPIO_I” had to settle for $11K.

Although the bar was set pretty high by PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker proved to be up to the task of challenging for the Guinness record. Players turned out in force for “The Record Breaker” – which was featured as a part of Full Tilt Poker’s fifth anniversary celebration “FIVE” – and either put up the $5 buy in or were able to satellite in for less. With the guaranteed prize pool of $500,000, it made the ROI on that entry fee more than tempting for many on the site.

The stable of Full Tilt professionals left the tournament alone, preferring to see one of the site’s dedicated amateurs take the title. By the time the tournament started at a little past 3:30PM (Eastern Time) on Sunday, 50,000 players took part in “The Record Breaker,” not quite beating PokerStars’ field but still a tremendous achievement. Overall, players may have liked this tournament better when it comes to that all important issue:  payouts. 7500 took some money away from this event, with “breo40” taking home $45,000 after defeating “gustavincho2,” who earned $31,450.

Now the debate can begin as to who truly took down the title of “Largest Online Poker Tournament” for Guinness World Records. The two tournaments featured different buy ins, different prize pools and different payout structures. It is unknown if this will play into the decision of the personnel of Guinness World Records, but congratulations to both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker on their successful attempts at shattering the old record.