What Were The Largest Ever Online Poker Tournaments by Field Size and Prize Pool?

Q: What Was The Largest Ever Online Poker Tournament?

A: Edit: August 30th, 2020

The record for the largest ever online poker prize pool was recently set by the World Series of Poker Online main event on GGPoker.

This $5,000 buy-in event ended up attracting a total of 5,802 entries, which created a total prize pool of $27,559,500.

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What was the largest ever online poker tournament? Let's break this down into two different categories - the largest ever online poker tournament by total # of players, and the largest ever online poker tournament by prize pool.

Largest Ever Online Poker Tournament by Field Size

The world record for hosting the world's largest ever poker tournament is currently held by Pokerstars.

The current record, which was set on June 16th, 2013, is a total field size of 225,000 players.

The world record breaking tournament, which was hosted by Pokerstars.com, featured a buy-in of $1 and a total guaranteed prize pool of $300,000.

The record breaking tournament was won by "Mr.SlavaPro" of Russia. "Mr.SlavaPro" took home $25,000 for his first place finish, while "Johnnykara75" received $15,000 after finishing as the runner-up.

The record breaking tournament on June 16th, 2013 had a total cap of 225,000 players. Pokerstars likely instituted the cap so that they could easily break their own record in the future.

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Pokerstars has broken the world record for hosting the largest ever poker tournament five times - here is a history:

December 28th, 2008 - 35,000 players turn out for $11 buy-in tournament (record)

July 19th, 2009 - 65,000 players turn out for $1 buy-in tournament (record)

December 27th, 2009 - 149,196 players turn out for $1 buy-in tournament (record)

December 4th, 2011 - 200,000 players turn out for $1 buy-in tournament (record)

June 16th, 2013 - 225,000 players turn out for $1 buy-in tournament (record)

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The 225,000 player turnout is made even more impressive by the fact that Pokerstars was forced to pull out of the US market after "Black Friday".

Largest Ever Online Poker Tournament by Prize Pool - this record also belongs to Pokerstars. The 14th Anniversary of the Sunday Million, which was held in March of 2020, ended up with a total prize pool of north of $17 million.


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