GGPoker Breaks 11-Year Poker Record With 420,084 Ocean KO Entries

GGPoker Breaks 11-Year Poker Record With 420,084 Ocean KO Entries
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Iva Dozet News Editor
Fact Checked: PokerListings
  • Updated: October 13, 2026
  • Read time: 2 min

Some poker records seem last about as long as the tournament that created them, while others apparently need more than a decade before somebody finally comes along to break them — this article is very much about the latter of the two.

This week, the $5 Ocean KO Opener drew 420,084 entries to GGPoker, breaking a benchmark that had stood since PokerStars attracted 253,692 players to its Common Cents tournament more than a decade ago, in October 2015.

Here’s how the new kid on the block we only wrote about last week got a world-record-sized tournament attached to its name.

Ocean KO Turns a $1M Guarantee Into a Decade Record

The $5 Ocean KO Opener ran across dozens of starting flights before Day 2 on October 12, eventually closing with 420,084 total entries.

That turnout pushed the prize pool beyond $1.9 million, almost doubling the original $1 million guarantee. More than $1.05 million was allocated to bounties, while the regular first-place prize amounted to around $43,000 before accounting for the knockout rewards.

After the final entry count was confirmed, GGPoker turned to its socials to mark the occasion, thanking the players who had “made history”.

PokerStars Had Owned This Record Since 2015

The benchmark that GGPoker shattered this week previously belonged to PokerStars, who set it during its Common Cents series on October 5, 2015.

The buy-in for that series was almost comically small, sitting at $0.01, but the $100,000 guarantee eventually brought in more than a quarter of a million players. Simon “DaDumon” Grabenschweiger ended up being the one to work his way through the enormous field and turned his penny into $10,000.

Before that particular 2015 tournament, PokerStars had already set records at 200,000 players in 2011 and 225,000 in 2013 before Common Cents pushed the record to 253,692, where it remained for 11 years.

EventYearBuy-inField
PokerStars Common Cents Kick-Off2015$0.01253,692 participants
GGPoker Ocean KO Opener2026$5420,084 entries

Eleven Years Changed the Shape of a Record Tournament

While a record was undoubtedly shattered this week, it’s still feels like we’re comparing apples to oranges or at least like it needs a little more context.

Back in 2015, PokerStars broke the record by making entry almost free. Over a decade later, GGPoker broke it by making a $5 tournament easy to enter repeatedly and attaching a novel incentive to every knockout.

Even before Day 2, Ocean KO had already shown signs of catching on. Its first major Sunday events all beat their guarantees, including a $10 tournament that drew 23,443 entries.

Eleven years after PokerStars needed a one-cent buy-in to pull more than 250,000 players into the same tournament, GGPoker pushed the number past 420,000 with progressive bounties, jackpot multipliers and enough starting flights to make “one tournament” feel much larger than it could have in 2015.