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ONLINE POKER RECORD FOR POKER STARS.COM

The planet's most popular online poker site records 20 386 simultaneous players

There's a new world record for numbers of online poker players on-site simultaneously this week, as Poker Stars.com reports 20 386 pokerheads playing at once on the popular site. Available records at the reliable Poker Scout site suggest that this is the first time that over 20 000 real money ring game players have been in action at the same time.

Poker Scout opines that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, ironically designed to curb online gambling in the US by banning financial transactions with online gambling companies, is at least partially responsible for the phenomenal Poker Stars achievement.

The law, enacted in 2006, resulted in an exodus of respectable and publicly traded competitors from the American market and catapulted the international PokerStars and competitor Full Tilt Poker to the top venue spots of the online poker world. In the year since the law was passed, both of the privately held poker sites have more than doubled in size, but PokerStars retains a better than 2 to 1 advantage over its nearest competitor.

The previous market leader, PartyPoker, reached an all-time high of 16 960 players in 2006 before being forced out of the US market by the UIGEA. PartyPoker saw its traffic cut in half and now sits in third place in the PokerScout rankings.

Indications that Poker Stars would hit the record books were clear on December 22 this year, when Poker Scout noted that twice in the preceding seven days, PokerStars traffic had topped out at over 19 900 players, already a record in the history of online poker.