New record for Poker Stars.com

[jetset]

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.

[catrina m]

I play on stars too.

Those numbers are awesome!

[pokeraddict]

Stars is an A+ class act. They deserve every bit of the success they have. It's too bad it took the UIGEA to pass Party. I wanted them to so it on their own.

[jetset]

POKERSTARS CONTINUES TO BREAK RECORDS

150 000 online is a tough one to beat....

The world's largest online poker website, Poker Stars.com continues to stun and amaze with a series of record breaking statistics that underline just how successful this operation has become, especially since the exit from the US market of competitors like Party Poker and Pacific Poker.

Last week we reported on the Poker Stars achievement of over 20 000 real-money players online simultaneously on December 27, but within days this was overtaken with the news that site attendance had moved up to 22 293 players at one time.

Now the site blog claims that it additionally set a new record for overall Internet poker traffic on Sunday December 20, when 150 000 visitors were on the site at once.

According to the blog, written by Brad "Otis" Willis: "The playing frenzy was evident in the big Sunday tournaments at PokerStars. The quarterly $1 050 buy-in Sunday Million drew more than 1 800 players to compete for a $1.8 million prize pool."

In February 2006, PokerStars became the first online poker site to host 100 000 simultaneous visitors, an achievement that merited inclusion in the following year's Guinness Book of World Records.