Nearly $150 Million in Cash Won During WSOP Online Series 2020

Record-breaking online tournament series awards 54 WSOP gold bracelets and crowns a 2020 Main Event winner

The international WSOP Online 2020 tournament series, played on GGPoker, concluded today. A number of long-standing poker records were smashed over the course of the 54 event series–including the largest prize pool ever for an online tournament. 

Highlights of WSOP Online 2020 include:

• • The largest online poker tournament ever: $27,559,500 in Event #77: WSOP Online $5K Main Event
  • The biggest online poker tournament prize ever awarded: $3,904,685 to Stoyan Madanzhiev, winner of Event 77: WSOP Online $5K Main Event
  • The most entries ever for a WSOP tournament: 44,576 in Event #71: BIG 50
  • Total prizes paid across all 54 tournaments: $147,789,550 (average prize pool: $2,736,844)
  • Total number of WSOP Online 2020 tournament entries: 239,754
  • Number of nationalities represented across the entire WSOP Online player base: 166
  • Amount raised for Caesars Cares charity: $354,756 ($257,853 raised by the worldwide poker community, $96,903 donated by GGPoker)
  • Number of tournaments with a prize pool of at least $1,000,000: 45
  • Number of tournaments with a prize pool of at least $5,000,000: 5
  • Number of tournaments with a prize pool of at least $10,000,000: 2
  • Number of tournaments with more than 10,000 entries: 5
  • Multiple event winners: Alex Stasiak (winner of Events #33 and 52)
  • Multiple final tables played: 39 players made multiple final tables, with five players making three final tables each (Michael Watson, Paul Teoh, Ajay Chabra, Bruno Albuquerque and Connor Drinan)
  • Female event winners: 3 (Kristen Bicknell – Event # 44, Thi Truong – Event #74 and Melika Razavi – Event #82)
  • Number of players that cashed more than 10 times across all 54 events: 281
  • Number of players that won at least $100,000 in cash: 203

The flagship World Series of Poker (WSOP) live poker tournament in Las Vegas was postponed due to the public health emergency and as a result, an online series of events took place at GGPoker from July 19 through September 6. In total, 54 WSOP bracelets were claimed in GGPoker’s WSOP Online 2020 series. The tournaments marked the first time that players located outside the U.S. were able to compete for official WSOP bracelets online.  

“Obviously the events of 2020 have been unprecedented, and hosting the WSOP Online series at GGPoker wasn’t in our plans at the start of the year,” said Ty Stewart, Executive Director of the World Series of Poker. “But going online has been a wonderful experience, with tens of thousands of new players all over the world able to experience some of WSOP magic that they might have been otherwise unable to – we’re delighted that the series has been such a resounding success!”

The WSOP Online 2020 series was extensively covered in the media, with tournament action regularly broadcast on GGPoker.TV and Poker Central, and tournament reports published on PokerNews and elsewhere.

“For 50 years, the WSOP has been the gold standard in the industry,” said Steve Preiss, Head of Poker Operations at GGPoker. “By introducing features like SnapCam and day 2 staking, GGPoker’s entire team worked tirelessly to bring our players a fun, unique experience just like they’d expect at the live WSOP.”

The WSOP Online 2020 Main Event was won by Bulgarian-native Stoyan Madanzhiev, who claimed a record-setting $3.9M prize. Other event winners included GGPoker ambassador Fedor Holz and well-known poker players Juha Helppi, Roberto Romanello, Kristen Bicknell, Daniel Dvoress, Eoghan O’Dea, David Peters,Christian Rudolph. Notable players that participated in WSOP events included soccer superstar Neymar, former world champion boxers Riddick Bowe & Amir Khan, tennis legend Boris Becker, Australian cricket player Shane Warne, mixed martial artists Elias Theodorou & Patrick Côté and former elite soccer player Andriy Shevchenko. 

“I’m personally very proud to be part of the effort that brought such a special WSOP series to the entire world,” said GGPoker ambassador, Daniel Negreanu. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we even got to break a lot of poker records along the way!”