Poker Stars Leads the Pack in Online Tournament Series in 2006
Pokerstars is #1 (Credit: designerd )
This year was a banner year for online poker. Sure, we hit a snag in October 2006 when President Bush signed the UIGEA and changed the online poker landscape forever. However, throughout the year, due to the popularity of No-Limit Texas Holdem and the World Series of Poker, we saw major online poker rooms such as Poker Stars, Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet set up or continue their traditions of rolling out fantastic online tournament series.
For someone who can't make it to the WSOP (at least not yet), I appreciate being given the chance to win hundreds of thousands of dollars without leaving my house or getting on a plane. I know tens of thousands of you out there agree with me. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it. The numbers don't lie.
Poker Stars began their World Championships of Online Poker (WCOOP) five years ago. Each year, the site which is home to four WSOP Main Event champs and a sponsor of the European Poker Tour, the WCOOP has grown in scope and numbers. This summer, after Bodog's Jamie Gold won the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event, the poker world turned its attention to Poker Stars. Almost 30,000 people – 27,399 to be exact – played in the 18 tournaments the site threw down. Almost 5,000 entered Event #2, a $530 No-Limit Hold 'Em extravaganza won by Rambo5 of Sweden.
Over 2,500 people coughed up the $2,600 buy-in for the Main Event, which was won by none other than J.C. Tran. The prize pool for that event was a staggering $6,275,000.00 with almost $700,000 going to the winner. That amount could've easily been over $1 million dollars, making this event the first to ever award that amount to an online player, if a deal wasn't made between the final table participants.
PokerStars doesn't just boast major prize pools and participation numbers. Oh no! The WCOOP also offers something that you can't get anywhere else but at the World Series of Poker, a gold bracelet for each event champ. Some players – and I'm not sure I'd be among this number – say that the “bracelet's the thing.” Maybe for them, but I'll take the cash any day.
Now Full Tilt , which recently moved behind PokerStars as the number #2 online poker room in the USA, offered two cycles of its online poker series this year. The Full Tilt Online Poker Series, or FTOPS as people prefer to refer to it, put their players to the test in August and November. In August, the first event paid out $86,000 to the winner, houdini10. The Main Event of the series saw crownginger take home over $160,000.
Of course, the November series blew these figures away. Event #2 had over 3,000 entrants which brought the prize pool well over $600,000. That was the second-biggest cash tourney in the web site's history. Spiked won the Main Event with its $1 million dollar prize pool, the first of its kind for FTP. Spiked earned $225,000 for his efforts.
For both events, over 18,000 players hung out at Full Tilt. (It breaks down to almost 8,000 for the FTOPS I and over 11,000 for FTOPS II.). A handful of players – the champions of each event – earned special avatars, which have only been reserved in the past for FTP pros like Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman and John Juanda or individuals who opt to spend 1,000,000 Full Tilt Points for the privilege.
They also offered a bounty for anyone who took out a FTP pro in any of the events. In the fall, they added a special golden Full-Tilt jersey as a prize for the winner. Nope, they don't offer any bling-bling yet, but maybe next year.
Ultimate Bet , the third-ranked online poker room that still allows U.S. players according to http://www.pokerscout.com , held their online festival, the Ultimate Bet Online Championships (UBOC) in December. They celebrated Phil Hellmuth's impressive tenth bracelet at the WSOP this summer with fanfare, fun and silver bracelets. The winner of each of the ten events, which were held over ten days (do you sense the pattern here?), got a silver championship bracelet and some serious money.
Ultimate Bet saw big numbers in attendance and prize pools, the biggest in the site's online history. For the ten events, they saw 6,524 people playing at UB.com. Although the Main Event fell far short of the numbers needed to meet the 1,000,000 guarantee (UB had to put up $300,000 from its own coffers), each one of the first eight events exceeded expectations and the guaranteed prize pool.
The site also offered a sweet prize to the Tournament Leader Board winner, rps5000. He gets to play Hellmuth, heads-up for a chance at $10,000.
Overall, PokerStars leads in attendance, prize pool and perhaps even extras. They do offer a gold bracelet at the WCOOP after all. However, Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet show us that they're happy to follow in Poker Stars' successful footsteps. This is all good news to the armchair and pro online poker players out there. If 2006 was this incredible, all I can say is – I can't wait for 2007 to begin!
See you at the tables.
Can't wait 'til the next festival of online tournament poker to play? That's okay! Poker Stars , Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet offer major paydays to their players each week. In addition, each site offers a plethora of smaller tournaments each day to feed your need for competition and love of money. Head on over to any or all three of these sites today. Check out the lobbies and start practicing for your chance to win big at next year's WCOOP, FTOPS and UBOC!