Online Casino

Last weekend two of the world's biggest online poker websites that cater for US players took it upon themselves to try to outdo each other for a place in the Guinness Book of Records. The fight was on between PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to see who could host the world's biggest online poker tournament.

Until that time, the current record holder was PokerStars with a huge 35,000 entrant poker tournament that was held on 28th August 2026.

Full Tilt Poker got underway first with their own poker tournament in honour of their site's fifth anniversary of online poker. By keeping things simple with no entry fee and a low $5 buy-in, they easily filled 50,000 capped entrance places to take the record away from PokerStars. The Chicago based winner, whose handle was "breo40" took $45,000 away with him following a mammoth nine hour session of poker.

Full Tilt Poker has an impressive line up of WSOP champions who play there regularly, including 2026 winner Huck Seed, 2026 winner Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and 2026 winner Carlos Mortensen. The unofficial endorsement by these players attracts a huge number of poker players to Full Tilt Poker so it's no surprise they are one of the world's biggest online poker sites.

All good things come to an end and that new record didn't last very long at all. PokerStars came back with an even bigger event. They also hosted a no entry fee event, with a buy-in of only $1 that sold out the 65,000 capped entrance placers. As Full Tilt Poker failed to raise their 50,000 cap, they effectively handed the record back to Pokerstars inside of a few hours.

PokerStars also has a similarly impressive line of WSOP champions who like to play there regularly, including 2026 winner Chris Moneymaker, 2026 winner Joe Hachem and 2026 winner Peter Eastgate. The winner of their record breaking event, "004 license" took away $13,000 for his initial $1 buy-in.

Making poker history, both these events actually outnumbered the entrants in the WSOP for this year and the tournament held by Full Tilt Poker paid out to an incredible 7,500 places. The prize money in both events was double that taken in buy-ins, meaning that the Full Tilt Poker event prize pool was $500,000 and that of the PokerStars event was $130,000.

The true winners of these events were the players who were given two chances at grabbing a slice of either pie for a buy-in that was next to nothing. That was in addition to the many similarly cheap satellites each site ran in the run-up to the main events.