Starting today, Party Poker is squaring the pot of every 50,000th hand played on its virtual felts. Also as part of the Genius promotion, which runs for 10 million hands, every millionth hand will receive a massive boost.
The Genius promotion kicks off at 12:00 ET on Monday and will run for a total of 10 million hands on the world’s fourth largest online poker site. Every 50,000th pot will see its value squared, a calculation many players have not made since high school algebra. The minimum pot in a jackpot hand is $100, while the maximum payout is $5,000. For example, if a 50,000th hand milestone were to occur at a table with a pot of $5, the jackpot would actually pay out $100, not $25, under the Genius promotion. Likewise, if it occurred at a table with a pot of $50, the pot would be boosted to $2,500 (or $50 squared).
Every player involved in a Genius hand will divide the extra payout equally, while the pot’s winner will scoop the original total. The maximum payout in any single hand is $5,000, which equates to about a $71 pot. Winning hands will be shown online on PartyPoker’s website, although its Flash replayer is not compatible with the popular Firefox web browser. All cash game tables with $0.10-$0.25 blinds and higher are eligible and include Limit ($0.25-$0.50 minimum), No Limit, and Pot Limit Hold’em along with Pot Limit Omaha and Seven Card Stud.
Also as part of the Genius promotion on PartyPoker, every millionth hand will feature at least a $10,000 prize pool. The ten-millionth hand, which will mark the end to The Genius, comes with at least a $100,000 purse. These sizable bankroll boosts do not apply to heads-up cash game tables on PartyPoker. Players dealt to in a hand will share in its bonus prize and uncalled bets are not counted in the pot’s value. A tracker of the number of Genius pots won and their combined payout is available on PartyPoker’s website.
Finding a cash game to suit a player’s bankroll and interests is simple on PartyPoker, the second largest in the world behind the iPoker Network that does not accept customers from the United States. According to PokerScout.com, which tracks online poker room traffic, the site boasts a seven-day running average of 4,800 real money ring game players. At its peak, 8,000 cash game players can be found on PartyPoker, which recently re-signed World Poker Tour (WPT) Host Mike Sexton to serve as its ambassador and card room consultant. The online poker site has fiercely lobbied for Sexton to join the Poker Hall of Fame. Public voting for the 2009 class ended on July 2nd and the top 10 nominees will be unveiled on Thursday, July 9th.
On the first Sunday of every month, PartyPoker hosts its Monthly Million, a $640 buy-in tournament with at least $1 million up for grabs. It features a Championship blind structure and qualifiers begin at a scant $1. Daily country-specific freerolls and points qualifiers are also available in addition to cash satellites. Players start with a stack of 20,000 chips and blind levels tick off every 20 minutes. The price of poker begins at 25-50 and antes come into play beginning with Level 6, when blinds are 250-500. The high-stakes event typically pays out around $200,000 to its winner and $130,000 to its runner up.
The online poker site is also in the midst of qualifying members for the Asian Poker Tour’s (APT) Macau event, which takes place from August 12th through 23rd. PartyPoker holds weekly $750 buy-in satellites on Sundays that award one $7,000 Macau prize package for every 10 entrants. It includes the $4,300 APT Macau Main Event buy-in, seven nights’ hotel accommodation at the Rio (not to be confused with the home of the 2009 World Series of Poker), and $1,600 in spending money.