Where Did Online High Stakes Cash Games Go? New Report Explains

Most regulars know that Full Tilt was the king of high-stakes poker back in the day, but what’s happened since then?

Over the last few years, these games have spread out and found homes on various poker sites. The nosebleed landscape is still changing.

Let’s start in 2023 and 2024. We’ll see where high stakes games at $25/$50 and up ran, year after year until 2026.

High Stakes in 2023 – 2024: GGPoker Goes Private & the Market Adapts

In a (still) highly controversial shift, GGPoker took its games above $10/$20 behind closed doors in November 2023.

Hosts arranged the games, and having the bankroll no longer guaranteed your seat. Some players supported the move, others saw the restrictions as a reason to leave.

In 2023, GGPoker and WPT Global both had months with over 220,000 hands at $50/$100 or above. PokerStars, by comparison, was a niche site for high-stakes cash games. ACR had respectable traffic, but never more than a quarter of GG and WPT Global’s best months.

With GGPoker privatizing its games, they brought about a shift. Some players looked for alternatives, but it wasn’t as if the games died completely. Plenty of top pros like LLinusLLove, Barak Wisbrok, and Taisto Janter still played way beyond $50/$100. Even Matt Berkey was in the mix.

CoinPoker, not tracked by Quintace yet, also had a high-stakes scene, though their software was tough to look at back then.

ACR quickly saw a surge in activity, while traffic at WPT Global took a slight dip. By July 2024, both sites had about the same number of hands played (around 115,000).

WPT Global in 2024 ($50/$100+):

• Best Month: March – 144,714 hands
• Worst Month: August – 77,032 hands

ACR Poker in 2024 ($50/$100+):

• Best Month: July – 112,542 hands.
• Worst Month: February- 26,104 hands

PokerStars in 2024 ($50/$100+):

• Best Month: January – 7,686 hands.
• Worst Month: June – 1,084 hands

PokerStars, with declining rewards, never got above 8,000 high-stakes hands a month for the entirety of 2024. In 2025, their nosebleed traffic decline will get even worse.

High Stakes in 2025: WPT Global & CoinPoker Share the Throne

2025 was the first full year without GGPoker’s public high-stakes games, and two rooms ended up splitting most of the action.

The bigger story was CoinPoker. QuintAce first records a high-stakes hand there on December 31, 2024, and the site climbed quickly. It opened $300/$600 in January, $500/$1,000 in June, and $1,000/$2,000 by November. That November, CoinPoker dealt 100,596 hands between $25/$50 and $200/$400. No room in the data has had a bigger month since.

WPT Global stayed the go-to room for regular high-stakes action. It had games with a straddle and an ante, so ¥50/¥100/¥200 started with more money in the pot than $25/$50.

It kept the room busy all year. Traffic was down from its 2023 peak, but WPT was still a consistent leader in the nosebleed scene, without a doubt.

It’s no surprise that some of the biggest recorded cash game winners played there, and still do.

ACR went the other direction and lost most of what it gained in 2024. It averaged 63,300 high-stakes hands a month in 2024, then just 30,700 a month in 2025. Do some tough mental math, and that’s less than half. The reasoning isn’t clear on this one, because ACR had (and still has) the cheapest high-stakes rake of any room QuintAce tracks.

PokerStars kept sliding, as expected. 2025 started with a small uptic, but it reached peak lows of 1,084 hands a few months into the year. Compared to the giants, their nosebleed games were close to nonexistent.

By the end of the year, CoinPoker was running $1,000/$2,000 heads-up matches, and it went even higher in 2026.

High Stakes in 2026: WPT Global, CoinPoker, & ACR Dominate

On January 9, CoinPoker opened $1,250/$2,500 and $2,500/$5,000 on the same day. Both were higher than anything GGPoker ever ran in public. The biggest table in QuintAce’s data, a $1,000,000 heads-up table played 200 big blinds deep, ran on ten days that month.

on his YouTube channel

It was a bit surreal to see. CoinPoker was considered a niche room not long before, but now it held the biggest games. Impressive custom rakeback deals was always speculated as one of the driving factors.

At $1,000/$2,000 and above, almost every hand was heads-up. Through August, CoinPoker has dealt 9,031 hands above $200/$400 this year, nearly twice as many as every other room combined.

The biggest games have gone quiet since then, despite some highlights like a $2,000,000 pot.

The volume has moved down to lower stakes, for the most part. Its $25/$50 game has more than doubled, while $50/$100 and $100/$200 have fallen by half or more. Still, the last time anyone could watch online poker’s biggest game, it was on CoinPoker. They have a dedicated crowd of regs, and many are still in the seats there.

ACR came back from its 2025 slump. Its high-stakes traffic is up 100% on 2025, to about 61,200 hands a month, and every month since March has beaten the same month last year. In August, ACR went above $200/$400 for the first time in QuintAce’s data: 277 hands at $300/$600 and 46 at $500/$1,000. It’s too short to call a trend, but it’s well-deserved. ACR’s rake has always been a driving force.

Then there’s the consistent king of high-stakes, WPT Global, with about 87,700 high-stakes hands a month. However, if we zoom out, traffic is at 45% below its 2023 level. Its ¥100/¥200/¥400 game has lost 86% of its volume in three years, and the only game growing is ¥50/¥100/¥200, up 16% on 2025.

Why Action Moved? QuintAce Has 3 Guesses

QuintAce’s data can’t explain why the action moved, but the site’s owners have a few ideas.

Rake: Fees are always a factor, and it’s definitely keeping ACR afloat at the nosebleeds. WPT Global has slightly higher rake than ACR, but also attractive rakeback, especially for starting tables (40% rakeback at $25/$50 and up). CoinPoker just updated their nosebleed games with High Stakes Poker Online, lowered heads up rake with Battle Caps, and promise the highest rewards for $50/$100 and up. We’ll see if that changes anything.

Access: One possibility is that players flocked to places where the door was still open. Since the reform, no one can find a game above $10/$20 on GG without an invitation. The site seems to be sticking to their strategy, at least for now.

Financials: Another reason could be cryptocurrency, and how much easier it is to move funds around. ACR and CoinPoker both take crypto, and it’s much easier to move a few hundred thousand in BTC than in fiat currency.

Curious about your own rake, or want to see where it's lowest for your stakes? Try our free Rake Comparison Tool.

Article Source: QuintAce Report
(WPT Global, CoinPoker, ACR Poker, PokerStars, GGPoker)