PokerStars 25 Billionth Hand Makes Waves

If you tried to count aloud to 25 billion, you’d likely die of natural causes before you finished. The number is shares the rare air of other mythical creatures like the Unicorn, meaning that virtually no one has ever seen it, much less profited from it. That all changed this week on Monday as PokerStars approached the magical 25 billionth hand ever dealt at the online poker site.

There was much media hype around this event as most online poker sites are no where near this mark (the cumulative number of hands dealt since the site started). Also up for grabs – a massive cash and prize package worth $150,000. So as the magic number approached (a player only needed to be dealt into a hand to be eligible for the prizes), the poker forums started buzzing. Players rushed to login into PokerStars to sit at a table and take their stab at winning. Unfortunately that rush of players would cause issues…

With only six players seated and one sitting out (what a moron!), the 25 billionth hand was dealt on a ½ Limit Omaha High Low table. So we have CONFEDERATE sitting out, NEONFROST, TUPAPI777, FRTSPKNDMN, N47J25S, and CHRIS12080 that are present when the hand goes down. After being dealt in, the traffic spike caused a network issue with PokerStars. NEONFROST never got to play because his hand disappeared. After complaining to the PokerStars support staff, the incident was quickly investigated and it was determined that NEONFROST would have had the winning high hand. TUPAPI777 had the winning low hand and an interesting proposition surfaced. The pot was split, so who really won? Believe it or not, this wasn’t set forth in the rules as it was assumed (apparently) that a standard game would have produced the winner. Taking it all in stride however, PokerStars announced that the players would split the cash portion of the prize and the tournament package that included stops at the WSOP and the PokerStars WCOOP event would be given to each player.

So in the end, despite what could have been another embarrassing blow for online poker (think Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker) was redeemed by the classy staff at PokerStars.