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.
![Pokerstars logo - Small](https://www.poker-king.com/images/articles/logo_ps_150.gif)
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".
![World Championship of Online Poker - Small logo](https://www.poker-king.com/images/articles/logo_wcoop_150.jpg)
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