WSOP Sets Guinness World Record For Largest Online Poker Tournament Prize Pool
Last month, the 2020 World Series of Poker Online Main Event on GGPoker created a prize pool of more than $27 million. That amount was believed to represent the most money ever awarded in a single online poker tournament.
Guinness World Records has now officially confirmed this as a fact, giving the event the award for “Largest Prize Pool for an Online Poker Tournament.”
In fact, the $27,559,500 won in the 2020 WSOP Main Event on GGPoker surpassed the previous largest online tourney prize pool by nearly $6 million.
The previous record was $21,780,000, held by the partypoker MILLIONS in Nov.-Dec. 2018.
The 2020 WSOP Main Event culminated the more-than-three-month WSOP Online bracelet series in early September.
The 2020 WSOP had originally been scheduled as a 101-event series. That plan included 87 live bracelet events at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, plus 14 online events on WSOP.com. However, the COVID pandemic forced the WSOP to scrap the in-person series and instead offer an online-only alternative.
The $5,000 buy-in WSOP Main Event on GGPoker was announced with an attention-grabbing $25 million guarantee. That meant GGPoker was already aiming for the largest ever prize pool for an online tournament.
The WSOP Main Event had 23 starting day flights and the ability for players to enter up to three times. Even so, there was some suspense over whether or not it could really hit its guarantee as the final group of starting flights approached.
Ultimately that mark was reached and then some when 5,802 total entries together built that record-setting prize pool. In the end, the top 728 finishers cashed and split that money. Stoyan Madanzhiev of Bulgaria took the title and a $3,904,685 first prize.
“This Guinness World Records title was on our radar from the beginning,” said Steve Preiss, Head of Poker Operations at GGPoker in a press release announcing the record.
“Breaking a Guinness World Records title shows what happens when you combine GGPoker’s amazing platform with the World Series of Poker brand,” added WSOP Director Ty Stewart. “This will be a tough record to beat.”
