[NormalLife]

[ QUOTE ]
nikstar winngin 46k off 300$ in his first ever online tourny on stars is OUT OF CONTROL

[/ QUOTE ]

Seriously, lets take a step back and think about this for a second. This should be the equivalent of trying to guess your opponents hand here, but the question is: Why does PokerStars run the World Series of Online Poker?

The answer:
1. Attract new people to their site with big payouts and bracelets, attempting to capitalize on the WSOP hype right now.
2. Convert those people who already use the play chip client into paying customers, attracting them to making their first real cash deposit.

Both of these results, if effective, should produce a lot of new people to PokerStars real money events... just like the WSOP in Vegas generates alot of new people there who are not used to throwing down $1,500-$10,000 to play a tournament. So it really should come as no surprise that there are people at the top of the list who have not recorded a lot of play on PokerStars tournaments.

This really means that their plan may be working a bit... and really fits with how PokerStars has grown from the beginning: Anyone can win, even with no experience. "Look, player x has never entered a real cash tournament, and just won $40k. Why don't you put your cash into our system too, and stop playing with those fake chips?"

Does this mean that PokerStars is somehow rigging these tournament newbies into winning? Uh, no. Look at the WPT or WSOP results from the last 5 years, and tell me how many of those players are professional poker players, and how many of them are green or even first time tournament players? They are FLOODED with newbies, which is why someone like Moneymaker and Raymer can make such a huge impact on this game: in poker, you can take an absolute nobody and in a week's time they have a real shot at being one of the most well known players in the game. (And I hardly think you can say WSOP or WPT is stacking the deck to make this happen...)

In the end, its very simple and requires absolutely no conspiracy theory, or hacker theory, or anything else Tom Clancy might write about.

Its just marketing, and business strategy. Plain, and simple. Make attractive events, attract more paying customers. Make more money.