It’s that time again at PokerStars. The time that thousands of players logon to try to win the lottery. It is time for another billionth hand promotion at the world’s largest online poker room. This time, PokerStars is celebrating its 70 billionth hand in its “Road to 100 Billion” celebration.
The promotion is the same as the other ones in the series, which occur every 5 billion hands. Starting with hand 69,700,000,000, every player dealt into a “millionth” hand will win a cash prize. Of course, the one players will want to be dealt into is the 70 billionth hand, which will feature the largest prize of them all.
Here’s how the prizes will be determined. For every millionth hand, each player dealt cards will win $50 for every VIP Player Point (VPP) that they earned in the previous 50 hands played at that table. This amount comes on top of a base $50 prize that is given regardless of VPP’s earned. Thus, if someone just joined the table and was lucky enough to be in the millionth hand right away, he would win $50. Whoever wins a part of the milestone hand will receive double the prize.
As far as the 70 billionth, or Mega Milestone, hand is concerned, the formula is similar, just better. Each player dealt in will receive $500 for every VPP earned during the last 50 hands at that table, on top of a $500 base prize. The winner will pocket a whopping $70,000. In the case of the Mega Milestone pot being chopped or split, each winner will receive a share of the $70,000 proportional to his share of the main pot.
In cash games (tournaments do not apply to this promotion), VPP’s are earned based on the rake taken from the pot. At cash tables with eight or more seats, the total VPP’s earned at the table in a given hand are 6 for every $1 in rake or 8.5 for every €1. The total VPP’s are then divided equally amongst the players who were dealt cards in the hand.
At tables with seven or fewer seats, 5.5 VPP’s are distributed for every $1 in rake or 8 VPP’s for every €1 in rake taken from the pot. Again, the total VPP’s are split amongst everyone dealt into the hand.
While the VPP formula is based partly on the number of seats at the table, it does not matter how many players are actually seated or dealt cards in the hand.
Microstakes Pot-Limit and No-Limit cash games actually use different VPP multipliers and there it does not matter how many seats each table holds. For every $1 in rake, the VPP multipliers are 10, 8.5, and 7 for $0.01/$0.02, $0.02/$0.05, and $0.05/$0.10 limits, respectively. Change the currency to Euros and the multipliers are 12.5, 10.5, and 9.
PokerStars typically pauses play at the milestone table so that everyone is aware that a big hand is about to be dealt. Pay attention to what is going on; you do not want to be present for a milestone hand and lose out on a chance to win the big winner’s prize by folding pre-flop! Except in very rare situations, you will win a larger cash prize from the promotion than you will lose by playing a terrible hand.
