This year wasn’t the greatest, to say the least, for PokerStars. Despite coming out relatively clean so far (repeat: so far) from Black Friday, at least compared to Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker, the U.S. Department of Justice indictment and subsequent loss of revenue from the United States could not have made those working at the world’s largest online poker room feel very happy. Nevertheless, PokerStars does have something to celebrate: its ten-year anniversary. The site began offering games in December 2001 and rather than expecting gifts for its anniversary, it wants to reward its players with a series of online events. There will be ten events in total (makes sense), but they will be unveiled in stages. Here is what we know about so far:
10th Anniversary Giveaway
PokerStars is giving away 100 prize packages to the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) over the next month. Qualifiers come in three varieties: freerolls, ten cent tournaments, and 10 FPP tournaments. Top finishers in each qualifier will advance to one of two weekly finals where they will compete for the PCA prize packages.
The freerolls will run every day, every ten minutes, and will see the top ten finishers make the weekly finals. The 10 cent tournaments will be held once an hour at five minutes past the hour, while the 10 FPP qualifiers will go at 35 minutes past each hour. The top twenty finishers from each will be sent to the weekly finals. Those weekly finals will be run in pairs every Sunday from November 13th through December 11th. The top 1,000 finishers in each will win a part of $10,000 cash, while the top ten will be awarded a PCA package.
The PCA prize package is valued at over $15,000 and includes the $10,000 buy-in for the Main Event, hotel accommodations, and expenses.
10th Anniversary $10 Million Sunday Million
On December 18th, the Sunday Million will be quite a bit bigger. At least $9 million bigger. Starting at 2:30pm ET, the buy-in will be $215, and the prize pool is guaranteed to be at least $10 million, with at least $2 million guaranteed for first place. Qualifiers for the Sunday Million abound at all sorts of buy-ins, including the $11 Sunday Million Mega Satellite, which will start one hour before the Sunday Million and will send at least 1,000 players to the big tournament.
10th Anniversary World Record Tournament
On December 4th, PokerStars will attempt break its own world record with a $1 buy-in tournament with a $250,000 guaranteed prize pool and a $50,000 first prize. In 2009, Stars set the record, as 149,196 players entered the gargantuan event, but this year, the poker site wants to get at least 150,000 at the tables simultaneously. If you do enter and anticipate playing normal tournament poker, plan on sticking around for hours and hours and hours if you think you can make the final table.
Over the next few days and weeks, PokerStars will reveal the remaining seven promotions. Stay tuned.
How can there be a world record when it was never verified by Guiness?