By
Dan |
Published
May 22 2007, 11:51 AM
This past weekend, the online poker world hit another milestone as
PokerStars dealt its 10 billionth hand. As the rest of the community had its eyes focused towards Full Tilt Poker’s Online Poker Series, PokerStars was making its own waves. Scotty Yeates, who goes by Scotty on PocketFives, is the VIP Program Manager for
PokerStars. On Saturday, May 19, at 4:51pm ET, the 10 billionth hand was dealt at a $0.01/$0.02 table. Of course, Scotty was on the scene. He took some time to explain the elation felt at one of the largest online poker sites this weekend.
“This was a milestone for the industry, not just for PokerStars,” explains Scotty. “Five years ago, who could have dreamed all the sites together would have dealt 10 billion hands, much less one site? A one million dollar tournament online every week was fantasy not too long ago.” The entire promotion paid over $10 million back to PokerStars members, meaning a lot of value was out there for the taking. The PokerStars blog explains the sequence of events which led to the 10 billionth hand: “More than 100,000 players were packing PokerStars tables. Among those 100,000 were PokerStars players Rechargeable, inwooke, The_Moog, XTedForrestX, Ferius, and justine0003. Suddenly, everything stopped, and the hand number at the top of the Venusia table read: 10,000,000,000.” Scotty immediately jumped over to Venusia and typed: “Welcome to the biggest hand of one cent two cent ever” in the chat box. With cash to the winner of the hand on the line, nearly everyone’s chips went into the middle of the table and justine0003’s 8-3 of clubs made a flush. She walked away $100,000 richer. Not too bad for the 19 year-old from Canada who had just $12 in her account Check out the hand as it unfolded:
Scotty comments on what it means to have a woman win this enormous promotion: “This is a game where everyone in world can compete. I would love for a woman to win the World Series of Poker this year; it would do so much for poker worldwide. When I was working with the play money players, I was shocked on how many female names I saw. I didn't expect the number to be so high.” With so many players flocking to PokerStars in recent weeks, the site has set other milestones besides dealing its 10 billionth hand. The 500,000th order was just placed in the FPP/VIP store. PokerStars just signed up its nine millionth account. Two new Supernova Elites were crowned this month: ElkY and BigJoe2003. The latter e-mails Scotty every day looking for options for his Aston Martin.
The entire 10 billionth hand promotion was laden with prizes and opportunities for casual and professional online poker players alike to rake in some cash. Trivia freerolls were held for play money players to have the opportunity to earn money. Milestone hands occurred every millionth hand, starting with the 9.9 billionth. Money was added for the Sunday Million and Warm Up and double FPP/VIP points were handed out like candy at a parade.
In an industry still going strong, PokerStars is the pace-setter. Congratulations to everyone at PokerStars for building and maintaining an outstanding online poker site. We look forward to great promotions in the near future. Visit PokerStars today.