
One of the first major online series in 2025 is officially in the book. The PokerStars New Year Series, which kicked off back in December, wrapped up a few days ago, having awarded in excess of $36,000,000 in prize money.
It was an exciting series through and through, featuring an extensive schedule with over 350 events divided into three buy-in orbits. Thanks to this, all PokerStars players were able to get in on the action and compete for their share of big guarantees.
Last weekend saw the conclusion to the New Year Series, with three Main Events playing out, awarding the biggest single prize of over $220,000. Now that the dust has settled, we are bringing you a quick overview of the most important highlights.
New Year Series Wraps Up With Big Prizes
With pretty much every tournament series, the last few days are usually the most exciting, and the PokerStars New Year Series was no exception. The final weekend and the following Monday saw all Main Events come to their conclusions, producing some big winners.
Topping this group of winners was Ole “wizowizo” Schemion, the German high roller who conquered the high version of the Main Event and picking up the largest single prize of the entire series. After outlasting the super-strong field of 230 entries, Schemion picked up $224,425.
The $109 Main Event-L featured the popular Mystery Bounty format, resulting in not one but two major winners. The player ‘blackprecise’ emerged victorious, taking home $63,330, while ‘buldegah’ was the lucky recipient of the massive $100,000 top mystery bounty.
Talking about the players who had the most success in terms of numbers of titles won, we had two who managed to capture four titles: Renan “Aziz.Mancha” Aziz and ‘King153246’ and two more who ended with three victories: Roman “RomeOpro” Romanovsky and Blaz “Scarmak3r” Zerjev.
Brazilian Players Dominate Once Again
Those who have been keeping tabs of results of major PokerStars tournament series have probably noticed a certain trend of players from Brazil finishing in top spots quite often. This trend continued in the New Year Series.
Representatives of Brazil took home a grand total of 67 titles, which is truly an impressive number, especially considering that Ukrainian players came in second with 25 wins, followed by 23 UK online poker winners.
However, equally as impressive is seeing how many different countries participated in the series and produced at least one winner. Every single continent apart from Antarctica was represented, and this is always great to see, reminding us just how popular online poker is around the globe.
PokerStars Kicks 2025 Off in Style
All in all, the PokerStars New Year Series was a success in every way, attracting thousands of players and breaking its original total guarantee of $35 million.
It is a good sign for the operator, but also for all poker players, from completely casual ones to hardcore grinders. It is a good indicator of what to expect this year, and we expect is exciting series, big guarantees, even bigger mystery bounties, and much more.
It is safe to say that it won’t be long before PokerStars returns with another tournament series to keep us all busy and entertained, and we’re looking forward to seeing what they have up their sleeve!