PokerStars’ Spring Championship of Online Poker 2012 paid out over $65m in prize money, a million dollars more than SCOOP 2010. More than half a million tournament entries saw players from 156 countries competing in 40 tournaments.
Beating pre-Black Friday SCOOP 2010 numbers will give a major psychological boost to the whole industry. PokerStars has shown that the loss of US players can be offset by global growth in little over a year.
However, it seems that the new players play lower stakes than the sadly excluded Americans. It took 40 events to get the same entry fees in 2012 that 33 events raised in 2010, but the achievement is still impressive.
The record for the most entries for an online tournament series is still held by PokerStars for this year’s MicroMillions which saw almost 1.3 million seats filled.
