The PokerStars 10th Anniversary celebration has come and gone, and in the process records were broken and millions of dollars were won. PokerStars gave out poker bonuses and hosted huge tournaments, and both of these ensured that thousands upon thousands of players were online well into December. This article will focus on the tournaments that were part of this celebration.

On December 4th, 2011 the World Record Tournament took place with a buy-in of $1. Although the guaranteed prize pool was $250,000, PokerStars capped the event at 200,000 people. This meant a guaranteed overlay of at least $50,000! The guaranteed first prize was also $50,000, a huge sum for a $1 tournament.

It took just over 7 hours for the record breaking tournament to reach completion, with the final three players agreeing to a deal that awarded payouts of $25,741, $34,000 and $40,258. Sokoluk1991 from Russia was the big winner, taking down the aforementioned $40,258.

The Sunday Storm is the biggest field every week with its accessible buy-in of $11. The 10th Anniversary Edition on December 11th, 2011 was the biggest it’s ever been with the guarantee up to a whopping $1 million from its usual $200,000. Adding to the festivities was a guaranteed first prize of $150,000 and $100 bounties on all PokerStars Pros in the event. Talk about some extra PokerStars rakeback!

A whopping 116,400 players registered for the special Sunday Storm. Once play reached 6-handed, the remaining participants worked out a deal that saw the smallest payout at $55,127 and the biggest payout at $87,437. In total the final six players chopped up over $400,000, an unbelievable amount for an $11 tournament.

PokerStars saved the best for last as they put up not only their biggest Sunday Million ever, but the biggest prize pool in the history of online poker. The previous biggest Sunday Million was held in March of 2011 celebrating five years of the tournament. That edition saw 59,128 players show up.

The 10th Anniversary version of the Sunday Million topped the March version by hitting 62,116 players and a final prize pool of $12,423,000. This narrowly edged out the 2010 WCOOP Main Event which had a $12,215,000 prize pool with a $5,200 buy-in. First place was guaranteed in the 10th Anniversary Sunday Million to be an enormous $2,000,000.

It was expected that the players would chop when they reached nine-handed play, but discussion didn’t really begin until six-handed play. At that point there was nearly $5 million left in the prize pool, and each remaining player locked up a vast sum of money.

The biggest winner in the 10th Anniversary Sunday Million was the eventual victor of the tournament, First-Eagle. Hailing from Canada, First-Eagle won $1,146,574 when it was all said and done. The remaining five payouts ranged from $580,724 to $995,996, which are unbelievable amounts for a simple day of poker on one of the best Mac poker sites.