Online gambling has been live in New Jersey for just over three months and from now on into the beginning of Spring, the state’s largest poker network will be celebrating fifteen key milestone hands. This week, BorgataPoker.com announced its Countdown to 30,000,000 Hands promotion in which it will reward players who participate in the milestone hands with cash prizes.
The promotion begins with the 25,000,000th hand and, unlike the well-known milestone hand promos at PokerStars, it is very simple. The winner of that hand will receive $1,000, while the rest of the players who were dealt cards will get $100. That’s it. No multipliers or complicated calculations. $1,000 for the winner, $100 for everyone else.
The prizes are the same for next four million-hand marks. After 29,000,000, the milestone hands will come in 100,000 hand increments (29,100,000, 29,200,000, etc.). The magical 30,000,000th hand will award a whopping $10,000 to the winner and $1,000 to the rest of the players who were dealt into the hand (remember, you cannot be sitting out, even if you are at the table).
Also unlike PokerStars, BogataPoker is counting all real-money hands, not just those at cash game tables. So fastforward games, Sit-and-Go’s, and multi-table tournaments all qualify, making this a very workable promotion for everyone, not just cash game specialists. BorgataPoker notes that fastforward hand numbers lag behind the other games a bit, so it is possible that a milestone hand will appear “out of sequence.”
In the case of multiple pots in a hand, the winner of the main pot will be the top prize winner. If the main pot is split, BorgataPoker will split the winner’s prize plus the other players’ prize amongst the hands that won. In the example the poker room uses on its site, two players win the main pot with same hand. As a result, the $1,000 winner’s prize and the $100 other players’ prize would be added up and then divided equally between those two players. Thus, each player would win $550.
This is the second milestone hand promotion held by a regulated U.S. online poker room. The first was by UltimatePoker, the first legal poker room to go live in Nevada. Last July, UltimatePoker celebrated its 10,000,000th hand with $5,000 for the winner and $500 for everyone else in the hand. Prizes were doubled once the stakes hit a certain level.
According to rankings produced by PokerScout.com, the Party Borgata Network (which includes BorgataPoker.com and nj.PartyPoker.com) is the largest in New Jersey with a seven-day average of 240 cash game players. WSOP.com is next with 170 players, followed by the All American Poker Network with 120 and Ultimate Poker with 70.
