If you’re a cash game player over at PokerStars you’ve likely come across their “milestone hands” promotion which is part of their main 50 billion hands milestone promotion. Basically for every millionth hand dealt, PokerStars are selecting a table and for each player with cards at that table they will win a cash prize (with the winner of the pot having their prize doubled).

Quite a nice promotion and one that’s bound to increase cash game participation particularly when PokerStars have a countdown of hands played in the lobby and even display a popup during existing games (such as tourneys that aren’t even applicable to the promo) when a millionth hand is nearly there. No doubt punters are rushing to multi table cash games when a milestone hand is imminent in the hope that their table is the lucky one. The part that struck me about this milestone hand promotion though is not the players that are in the hand but the players that aren’t.

Let me explain. When a table is selected as being a milestone hand table it is publicised in the PokerStars lobby and the hand is paused for a minute or two until a moderator explains how things work, etc. This is the time when the vultures start to circle. Due to the fact that everyone logged into PokerStars knows which table is the milestone table literally a couple of hundred observers descend onto that table waiting in the wings. Now some of the observers might be bloody stupid enough to think that they can sneak onto the table somehow and grab some of the spoils, but most of them are there to basically offer their critique, ahem, on how the players played the hand. In other words post a stream of vitriolic abuse at how the players should have done this and that – not folded, etc.

What makes me laugh about this situation is that there seems to be a band of milestone hand observer “groupies”. Basically people that are just constantly following milestone hands around so they can wait until the hand has been played to add in their pathetic comments and abuse the players on the table. This can go on for hours. A whole sub culture of the same observers who bring up stories of bad plays (in their opinion) from hands played several hours ago. Nothing to do with jealousy of course, I’m sure they just want to share their knowledge with the other players. However, based on the level of grammar, wit, articulation and knowledge displayed by the observers sending in comments I wouldn’t trust them to sit the right way round on a toilet seat let alone offer poker schooling. A radical idea for these “observers” may be for them to actually play poker themselves, rather than spending hours abusing the play of others.