Eight years ago, PokerStars organised its largest weekly major tournament for the first time. On 2 March, they celebrate the anniversary with an $8,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.
PokerStars makes a habit of celebrating anniversaries in a larger than life fashion, which, of course, makes players happy in turn. On 2 March, the room offers yet another incredible tournament: on its 8th birthday, flagship weekly major event Sunday Million is featuring an $8,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.
The buy-in is $200+$15 as usual, which means a minimum of 40,000 players need to participate if the tournament is not to have an overlay. Talking about the undisputed market leader, it still cannot be taken for granted to happen, although it is most likely to; last year, over 50,000 users registered. Participants can earn their seats through a wide range of qualifiers from $1 to $33.
The largest Sunday Million to date was held in 2011: on the occasion of the 10th birthday of PokerStars, the celebratory event saw 62,000 entrants and a prize pool of $12.4 million.
Speaking of records, the room was prepared to organise the Guinness World Record breaker online tournament with 230,000 players on Sunday, offering a humble buy-in of $1 and a guaranteed prize pool of $300,000 (that is, a guaranteed overlay of $70,000).
However, the attempt eventually failed: while PokerStars is well known for constantly breaking (its own) records, the field did not reach the set limit but stayed at 211,619 entrants, about 14,000 short of the current record of 225,000. The room even offered satellites for the $1 tourney and gave away tickets to all players who deposited at least $10, using the relevant bonus code.
In the end, the record attempt event ran for four hours and was won by German ‘Dal2009’ for $25,000.
