PokerStars Server Folds Player's Cards During 25th Billionth $200,000 Hand

February 17th, 2009 | 12:02 pm

PokerStars recently dealt its 25th billionth hand, and they were running the traditional promotion awarding money to players at tables with even numbers leading up to the landmark hand. The 25th billionth hand of PokerStars was going to dish out $200,000 prize money to the lucky players in that table, and that chase obviously showed up in PokerStars traffic numbers. As it turns out, the high traffic caused a server glitch that folded one player's cards when the paused hand was restarted.

PokerStars recently dealt its 25th billionth hand, and they were running the traditional promotion awarding money to players at tables with even numbers leading up to the landmark hand. The 25th billionth hand of PokerStars was going to dish out $200,000 prize money to the lucky players in that table, and that chase obviously showed up in PokerStars traffic numbers. As it turns out, the high traffic caused a server error that folded one player's cards when the paused hand was restarted to be played out under the eyes thousands of players who had opened the table in their poker client to watch it.

Huge Traffic from Players Chasing the Magic Hand

From this poker player traffic tracking graph from Pokerscout it can be seen that there were over 100 thousand poker players chasing the 25th billionth hand of PokerStars. Right after the hand was dealt, the player traffic fropped down to less than 10,000 which is the norm at that time of the day. PokerStars 25th Billionth Hand Traffic

Extra $50,000 Winner Since Game Was Omaha Hi-Lo

The 25th billionth hand was dealt at Susilva limit Omaha Hi-Lo table with $1/$2 blinds.

The PokerStars host of the hand HostJeff announced that since the game is Omaha, there's good news and bad news if it will end up a split pot. The bad news being that the $100,000 winner's share is split amongst main pot winners, and that share will be smaller if a low hand qualifies. But the good news is that all main pot winners win the Tourney package worth $50,000. If the game had been Texas Hold'em there would have been only one possible winning hand, but in Omaha Hi-Lo there can be more winning hands.

And as it happened, there were two Tourney packages awarded for players NeonFrost and tupapi777. Both these lucky players will get to enjoy these tournament packages:

European Poker Tour Monte Carlo Grand Final package
PokerStars Caribbean Adventure package
World Series package
World Championship of Online Poker Main Event ticket

Server Hiccup Folds One Player's Cards

With so many players watching the 25th billionth hand and the waiting list to the Susilva table climbing over 1600, the PokerStars servers had a little glitch when the dealing of the paused hand was restarted, and it appeared as player NeonFrost would have folded his hand. As he explained in the chat he would have had no reason to fold there, and PokerStars support was quick to agree and reviewed the case behind the scenes.

Think about it, would you intentionally fold your hand when you have $7 invested and could win $100,000 against just 4 other opponents? Talk about pot odds. Furthermore NeonFrost had nice double suited hole cards of J95Q. It was clear to everyone involved that NeonFrost's cards should not have been folded when the dealing of the hand was restarted.

It was ruled by PokerStars that prizes were to be awarded as if NeonFrost would not have folded his cards. A good decision there by PokerStars, and the other winner tupapi777 was a nice guy and had no problems with splitting the pot with NeonFrost.

PokerStars 25th Billionth Hand Table Screenshot

The PokerStars 25th billionth Hand Winners

NeonFrost: Won High pot -- $50,000 and tourney package worth $50,000
tupapi777: Won Low pot -- $50,000 and tourney package worth $50,000
FrtSpkndMn: $33,333.33
n47j25s: $33,333.33
chris12080: $33,333.33

An unlucky near miss was for player Confedrate, who had just sat down at the table and was waiting to post his blinds. As he was not dealt cards, he was not eligible for a share of the prize money and just had to sit and watch how the hand dealt out and $200,000 was split between the other players.

If you don't have an account at PokerStars yet, then you can join the fun and download the poker client from our PokerStars Review page and use the $50 first deposit bonus code to get some free money.