Surge in Poker's popularity

The online poker Sunday specials market seems to have plenty of room to grow, judging by the steadily rising interest in these weekend competitive events with big paydays.

Last weekend stayed with the rising trend, with Poker Stars.com recording yet another starting field record of 7 632 players, all intent on going after a chunk of a prizepool that reached $1 526 400, which meant that the cash filtered down to another new record of almost 1100 participants. Although the first prize was originally calculated at a whopping $215 222 and some change, it was reduced following some deal making at the final table that ended with the two top payouts - SwedisRotKuk as winner on $187 504 and his heads up opponent Miamihans on $136 092 - benefiting.

Full Tilt Poker packed 'em in again with a $400 000 guaranteed tourney that produced a prizepool of $494 600 from an impressive starter field of 2 473, with 351 of them making the money bubble. The excitement and action all came down to a heads up between "imgrinding" and the self deprecating "im_the_dirt" with the former winning and taking home $90 734, and "dirt" cleaning up with a tidy second prize of almost $55 692.

517 players signed up for the Sunday evening Mansion Poker guaranteed, the latest in their nightly series of tournaments of this genre. 54 players were in the money from a prizepool of almost $150 000. Taking the lion's share of the prize money with $24 000 was player Lock8 and his final challenger Chino325 on $15 000.

The entrant numbers for the $200 000 guaranteed at Party Poker seemed to be building nicely, too with 1 103 players registering this weekend to build a total prizepool of $220 600, which paid down to the 150th survivor. BadBeat1940 faced Congo152 for the final confrontation, with BadBeat taking the $46 326 main prize and the runner up pocketing $26 472 for his trouble.

Bodog's Sunday tournament numbers were not yet available as we went to press.