PokerStars Has Biggest Ever Weekly Tournament

While Party Poker Cancels Its Guaranteed Tournament, The Party Just Begins at Poker Stars

Soon after President George W. Bush signed the port security bill that effectively banned banks from funding gambling sites, Party Poker took some drastic measures. Aside from disallowing US players from sitting in real-money games, and the big pop-up message announcing the cessation of dealings with Americans, there were two big things missing. First, the Sunday Million weekly guaranteed tournament had vanished from the listings along with many of Party Poker’s other guaranteed tournaments. Second, and most noticeable, all of the Party Poker Monster Freeroll trappings were gone from the site. No more Monster prize pool ticker, no more Monster filters for game selection, and no more Monster tournaments or qualifiers were listed anywhere on the site.

With such severe actions being taken by the industry leader, all eyes were on this weekend’s tournaments at other sites to see how they would be affected. Poker Stars set the tone for the weekend by having its largest ever number of entrants in its weekly $1 million guaranteed tournament. A total of 6,157 players entered the tournament to build a prize pool of $1,231,400. The Full Tilt monthly $500,000 guaranteed tournament also went beyond expectations, with 1,127 players and a prize pool of $563,500. Ultimate Bet missed its target number of entrants again this week, but its $200,000 guaranteed tournament’s entry numbers have shown an upward trend over the past month, regardless of the US Legislation.

Thus, while the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act took down the leader in online poker, the sites that chose to stay open are more than willing to pick up Party Poker’s slack and have seen increased traffic as a result.


Poker Stars Sunday Million

With Party Poker out of the running, Poker Stars is the new online poker leader in terms of traffic. Party Poker passed the torch and Poker Stars turned it into a flamethrower with this weekend’s $1 million guaranteed tournament. The tournament made Poker Stars history for being its biggest weekly tournament ever with a first-place prize of $176,000.

Four of the nine players at the final table were from the United States, showing that American interest in online poker is still strong, in spite of the legislation. Sweden's Håcken entered the final table as the big stack with $10.3 million in chips but dazzy2004 was close behind with less than $100,000 fewer chips. Nobbyhayes was at the bottom with only $2.7 million. These were huge chip counts for a Poker Stars final table, especially when compared to last week where the chip leader entering the final table had only $3 million, almost as much as the short stack here.

courtesy of cardplayer.com

News Added: 17 October, 2006

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