Leading online poker network GGPoker has been on a remarkable run, setting successive records for the highest number of players connected to its platform at the same time.
Last Sunday (May 3), the operator crossed another major milestone as more than 900,000 players were online simultaneously, putting it within striking distance of one million concurrent users.
The achievement marks yet another high point for GGPoker as online poker traffic continues to surge on the platform. The timing is hardly surprising, with the spike coinciding with the opening day of the operator’s GG World Festival, a record-breaking tournament series carrying $300 million in guaranteed prize money. Running through June 9, the festival includes thousands of tournaments across a wide range of buy-ins and formats.
The day itself saw records tumble almost hour by hour. GGPoker first took to social media after reaching 700,000 players online, which at the time was already a new high for the platform.
Roughly an hour later, ambassador LijaPoker shared another update as traffic climbed past 800,000 concurrent players. A few hours after that, the site smashed through the 900,000 mark as traffic continued to build throughout the opening day of the series.
The growth is particularly striking considering that only a few months ago, GGPoker was celebrating its first milestone of 500,000 players online at the same time. Even today, on a weekday, the site has over 400k players online at the time of writing.
It is a staggering figure, especially at a time when several competing poker operators have struggled to maintain or grow their player pools while GGPoker continues to push further ahead.
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GGWorld Festival Effect
Whether 900,000 concurrent users qualify as an official world record is another matter. The Guinness World Record for the largest number of players seated simultaneously still belongs to PokerStars, which achieved the feat prior to Black Friday with more than 300,000 players seated across over 42,000 tables. However, no official record currently exists for the highest number of players logged into an online poker platform at once.
The milestone also checks out with tracking data from SharkScope, available on the Poker Industry PRO revamped database. While the data is reported with a one-day delay, it shows GGPoker reaching an all-time high of 862,260 tournament entries on May 4. The previous peak came during the Winter Giveaway Series in December 2025.
Cash game traffic, however, did not hit a record. According to PRO data, the network averaged 9,476 cash game seats over a 24-hour period. Its strongest cash game performance this year came in March.
The difference makes sense given that the traffic spike was driven largely by tournament participation. GGPoker had just launched its biggest tournament series to date, and the scale of the guarantees dwarfs anything else currently running in the online poker industry. For perspective, the next-largest upcoming festival outside of GGPoker is a $50 million series from PokerStars, which begins this Sunday as part of its Anniversary Series celebrating 25 years of operations. Earlier this year, PokerStars also ran a $45 million guaranteed SCOOP, while offshore-facing network Winning Poker Network hosted a $50 million OSS XL series.
At $300 million guaranteed, the GG World Festival is six times larger than the next-biggest comparable series. It underlines GGPoker’s continued dominance in the global online poker market. Although growth slowed somewhat during 2025 compared to previous years, the operator appears to have regained momentum heading into this year.
The Advantage GGPoker Holds
At the same time, part of GGPoker’s rise can be attributed to its ability to operate in markets where many competitors face tighter regulatory restrictions. Unlike publicly traded rivals such as PokerStars, PartyPoker, and 888poker, GGPoker is privately owned, giving it greater flexibility to remain active in several grey-market regions, particularly across Asia, where online poker demand continues to grow. As a result, many competitors have scaled back or exited certain markets entirely, leaving GGPoker with a sizable advantage.
Its partnership with the WSOP brand has also played a major role in its expansion. The relationship became even closer after GGPoker’s parent company NSUS acquired the WSOP brand in a deal worth roughly half a billion dollars. Since then, the two have continued pushing poker further into the mainstream, including bringing back live ESPN coverage for the 2026 WSOP live summer series.
That said, the scale of GGPoker’s growth should not be understated. Reaching numbers so far ahead of the rest of the industry is no small accomplishment. The operator is also spending aggressively to retain and reward players, currently distributing between $15 million and $17 million each month through promotions and giveaways. This May alone, giveaways are expected to hit $17 million, another company record. Similar traffic figures could emerge again once the WSOP Online bracelet series begins later this summer.
