It was a battle for the record books on Sunday between the two largest poker sites in the world. With the World Series of Poker setting records of their own this summer, Full Tilt Poker attempted to do the same and break the old record of 35,000 for the largest online tournament ever held.
The previous record was held by PokerStars, who achieved the feat earlier this year with an $11 buy-in tournament. As a special conclusion to their fifth-year anniversary as a site, Full Tilt decided to stage a record-breaking attempt of their own with a $5 buy-in, 50,000-player field. To add some incentive, Full Tilt added $250,000 in dead money to the prize pool, bringing the total to $500,000.
Registration quickly began to fill, but not before PokerStars went on the defensive, organizing their own record-breaking tournament, capped off at 65,000 runners. With a buy-in of $1 and a prize pool of $130,000, the site featured overlays of their own to bring in the players.
Both tournaments were more than successful, each reaching their respective capacities, but PokerStars came out as the clear winner, with 15,000 more entrants and a new world record.
Each site experienced their fare share of problems during the tournament. Complaints of the software slowing down and timeouts were made, albeit rarely. At Full Tilt, it took a total of 15 minutes before every player had been sat at a table. Fortunately, the site was well aware of the issue before it took place and the players responded positively to the experience.
For winning the largest tournament in history, 004 license pocketed an impressive $13,000. Over at Full Tilt, breo40 came out on top for the $45,000 payday.
