I don’t play online poker too often anymore, living in the southeastern United States and all, but when I do, I am thrilled to win twenty or thirty bucks in a session (I’m not quite the baller you think I am). If I won a billion dollars in a single hand, I’d be thankful that I had plenty of money for clothes because I would need a new pair of pants.
And then I would realize I just won a billion play chips and I’d just grin and nod.
That’s what happened last Tuesday (minus the dry cleaning), as a player on Full Tilt Poker won the first billion play money chip pot in the history of online poker. I would ask how we know for sure that this was the first time it happened, but it’s the internet and on the internet there are records of everything. Right, CIA?
At a 250,000/500,000 Six-Card Pot-Limit Omaha table, the key players in the hand were “1shini1,” who started with 674,420,000 chips and “Mitti7,” who had 490,580,000. 1shini1 raised pre-flop to 1,750,000, “blinds5” re-raised to 6,000,000, Mitti7 called, 1shini1 four-bet to 24,750,000, and the other two players called.
The flop was 5♥-7♣-4♥ 1shini1 and blinds5 checked, Mitti7 bet 48,000,000, then 1shini1 raised all the way up to 219,000,000. Blinds5 got out of the way before Mitti7 decided to shove and 1shini1 made the call. The pot was at 1,006,260,000. Just over a billion play money chips.
Mitti7 revealed J♥-2♣-6♥-8♦-7♠-K♦ and 1shini1 turned over 2♥-K♣-3♦-K♥-7♦-5♣. Mitti7 had flopped a straight; 1shini1 had a pair of Kings. The 4♣ on the turn and T♣ on the river, though, gave 1shini1 a club flush and the largest pot in the history of online poker.
So, it wasn’t a billion real dollars, but that pot did actually have some value. Though Full Tilt Poker gives players a 1,000 play money chip top-off each day, play chips are available for purchase. The minimum purchase amount is 200,000 play money chips, which sell for $1.99 in the Full Tilt store. Lot sizes and prices go up from there, all the way to 100,000,000 chips for $199.99. Thus, the billion chip pot is worth $2,000 in real money. Not too shabby at all.
PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker’s sister site, also sells play money chips, but at a better value. The $1.99 purchase is for 350,000 chips, while the $199.99 lot is 165,000,000 chips.
It may seem odd that people would buy play money chips (and maybe spending $200 on fake chips IS weird), but there are plenty of people who don’t feel comfortable wagering real money, but are fine with paying a few bucks to essentially play an online multiplayer video game. And when hundreds of thousands or millions of play money chips are at stake, the games are often taken quite seriously, even moreso than micro-stakes real money games.
Poker is a game and people want to have fun playing games. Whether they have fun with real money games or play games doesn’t matter, as long as they are having fun.
