Poker Numbers Up As Holiday Season Ends

New records by leading online poker tournament sites

With the holiday season over, poker players turned out in force again for the regular weekend online poker tournaments, illustrating once again that the global online poker sector continues to thrive.

Leading site Poker Stars.com generated a massive $1 425 800 prizepool with 7 129 registered players raring to chase after the Sunday Guaranteed Million following the seasonal break. With a first prize projected at just over $200 000, and enough cash in the kitty to put over a thousand entrants on the money list, there was plenty of excitement as the tournament got underway.

Going into the final table, player xapla held the lead with a remarkable $17 million in chips, but despite this was fated to end in position six after a see-saw game with plenty of action. At the death it was LOPINI and ch0ppy who faced each other in the heads up, with the latter winning the main prize of $201 037.80. LOPINI's $101 231.80 second prize was a pretty adequate compensation for his expert efforts.

Full Tilt Poker rose to the challenges of a new year by boosting its Sunday Guaranteed tournament to an impressive $400 000, which grew to $515 200 thanks to a solid entry list of 2 576 players. First prize was calculated at well over $94 000 with the money covering players as far down as the middle three hundreds.

Omaholic and DSnyder766 had at each other in the heads up, which was brief but exciting and resulted in the former picking up the main $94 513.44 paycheck whilst DSnyder pocketed not-so-bad second place winnings of $58 011.52.

Mansion Poker's evening $100 000 Guaranteed also received a boost when 502 contestants signed up, taking the pool to $149 800, producing a first prize of $24 000, and money for some 54 players. Opusx69 prevailed in a heads up for the main $24 000 prize, with runner up Samanta collecting $15 000.

Party Poker's $200 000 Guaranteed matched the trend of greater player numbers by recording a field of 1 167, building a worthwhile prizepool of $233 400, some of which filtered down to 150 players. In the end, thanks to a deal between the finalists, TheSinSinAnteKid and runner up kitbul added $38 606.59 and $38 415.42 respectively to their bank balances in a very tight match.