Knowing that they need to beat 35,000 players, both sites ramped up their efforts and added a ton of cash to the tournaments.  Poker Stars was up first with a $1 buy in.  This made it quite easy to draw players and when the final starting bell went off, 65,000 players had made their way to their computers to be a part of history.  The winner of the tournament was “004 license” and he managed to put $13,000 in his account about 10 hours after he put up his buck.  Not a bad day.

Full Tilt was next, but had a cap of 50,000 players on their tournament.  However, their tournament had a $5 buy in with $500,000 guaranteed.  That was enough to have everyone, including myself, ante up and take a shot at the massive $45,000 first place prize.  No luck on my end as two suckouts had me heading to the rail before the second hour, but that was hardly the case for “breo40” who ended up the eventual winner and added the large bounty to his account.

There is still some debate as to who will get the title because while Poker Stars had a much larger field, the tournament at Full Tilt had a larger prize pool.  In all likelihood, Poker Stars will hold the title, but I doubt if Full Tilt will take this one lying down.  They spent a ton of cash promoting this and will more than likely take another shot and open the next one up to 100,000 players if they have to in order to beat their main rival for internet poker.

Tournaments like this are a lot of fun to play in because the chips are usually flying pretty freely.  If you can get any kind of a run, you can coast into the money and possibly a payday that you would not be able to get in other tournaments on a small bankroll.  Keep your eyes peeled for the next round of the “Record Breaker” tournament at both sites.  Their rivalry is our gain as both will probably ante up plenty of extra cash to hold the title.