It was a smart move that was seemingly within the rules. The strange part about it for me is that these two particular accounts were the ones involved. I would have expected accounts from much more active players.
Their agreement to fold may be considered collusion and in that way they're cheating, but otherwise I think they're very clever for doing this.
8. During the Promotion, strict rules regarding player behaviour will be enforced. PokerStars reserves the right to take action against any player found to be abusing any aspect of the Promotion. Such action includes, but is not limited to, exclusion or suspension from the Promotion or from the Client, and the confiscation of rewards earned as a result of the abuse. The decision on what activity constitutes abuse of the Promotion lies with PokerStars management in its sole discretion.
/GG
lol @ all u guys saying they are smart. they arent going to see any $ and their accounts will be banned.
its a clear exploit
Originally posted by moneymaker19
A Pokerstars representative said this at 2+2PokerStars Steve
"The winners have been credited their funds. We'll look into altering details of the promotion for the 80 billionth hand to disincentivize such behavior in the future."
And later this
"We understand your concern and are aware that the winner of our 70 billionth milestone hand appears to have worked with another player and continuously folded
in an attempt to gain an advantage.We have reviewed the circumstances around the winning hand and have determined
that while this practice of "fast-folding" may not be in the spirit of the promotion it does
not violate the rules and the regulations of this promtion. As such we have honoured
our promtional award.Please note we are reviewing the format of this promotion to try to minimize this activity in future milestone hand promotions. We will
provide more information about this in the near future."
They will have their accounts banned and money confiscated? It doesn't seem so.
Originally posted by lessthanthreee
lol @ all u guys saying they are smart. they arent going to see any $ and their accounts will be banned.its a clear exploit
Stars support:
Hello Emanuel,
Thank you for contacting PokerStars and participating in our Milestone Hand promotion.
We understand your concern, and are aware that the winner of our 70 billionth milestone hand appears to have worked with another player and continuously folded in an attempt to gain an advantage.
We have reviewed the circumstances around the winning hand, and have determined that while this practice of “fast-folding” may not be in the spirit of the promotion, it does not violate the rules and regulations of the promotion. As such, we have honoured our promotional award.
Please note, we are reviewing the format of the promotion to try to minimize this kind of activity in future milestone hand promotions. We'll provide more information on this in the near future.
Rest assured that any format or terms of service revisions will be implemented in time for the next milestone hands promotion, which will be a special edition during our 10th Anniversary celebrations!
If there is anything else we can help you with, please feel free to contact us again as we will gladly assist.
Thank you for playing at PokerStars and being part of our promotions.
Regards,
Eddie
Supervisor
PokerStars Support Team
I questioned if it's collusion or not. Waiting for an answer.
TBH I don't have any issue with it. It's definitely against the spirit of the promotion, but that's about it IMHO.
Sure two folks agreed give themselves a better chance of winning the cash, but the pace those hands were ripping by, the time it took for the screen to refresh would have been enough for them to miss by hundreds of hands, if not more. Those hands were cranking through at the time of the 70B.
And the whole promotion was effectively a lottery. Anyone can increase their chances of winning a lottery by buying more tickets (and remember ALL entries in this promo were free - no extra rake was taken from any hand in order to participate). Hell, I considered doing something similar but couldn't really be arsed given the relatively small increase in chance of snaring the hand.
Look at how many tables were running at the time (and I don't know, but I'd guess at 10 - 20k range, allowing some are tourney tables and all) and it really only appears all they've done is gain a small advantage. And I'd assume the same thing has happened for each of the other Milestone hand promotions without the same success.
I'd imagine PokerStars will review the terms of the promo after the kerfuffle, although I'm not sure how they'd do this - imagine it happens again and PokerStars have to effectively redraw the Milestone hand to a different hand - bit of a lame duck in that case. And I personally don't think it's necessary. Looking forward to 1.2 Billion HUHU tables on the site around the 75B hand promo. 
Essentially I accept that these folks were still just lucky, probably not acting in the spirit of the thing, but not really cheating in any sense I understand it.
Edit: ^^ seems like PokerStars see it the same way.
you do realise they paid no rake while they folded to each other.
its collusion. stars are idiots
Hey guys,
we noticed it indeed right when the hand was being played out, we insta msged support as we felt pretty bad abt it.
-----------------------
Hello Tomas,
Thank you for your interest in our Road to 100 Billion Hand.
First of all let me assure you that collusion is obviously not possible in a heads-up ring game, however we are aware of those players who are sitting together on a high number of tables (often heads-up), and folding every hand in an effort to improve their chances of hitting a Milestone Hand. While this is not in the spirit of the promotion, it is also not against our rules and regulations.
We encourage you to note that players who open a high number of tables and decide to fold back and forth amongst themselves are not really benefiting from our Milestone Promotion.
As you already know, VPPs are a counter used to measure how much you play in PokerStars real money games. You earn points for each raked hand you play in our cash games, and by folding every single hand you will not generate any rake; therefore it will not increase a players chances to be eligible for the expected cash prize.
We would like to direct you to our ‘PokerStars Road to 100 Billion - Rules & Regulations’, which state the following:
“9. The milestone hands element of the Promotion is only applicable to real money ring games. The winner(s) of a milestone hand will be deemed to be any player that won a portion of the main pot of the hand. The fifty hands used to calculate the prize money must be dealt in the sixty minutes prior to the milestone hand being dealt. Any hands dealt before this 60 minute period will be excluded from the calculation. All prizes will be credited in USD.”
Please note that players dealt into a milestone hand win a cash prize of $50 for every VIP player Point (VPP) they earned in the previous 50 hands played on that table. As stated previously, by folding they are not accumulating any VPPs, therefore leaving the possibility to earn a minimum cash prize. Please also refer to the details that we have available for the PokerStars Milestone Hands up to 100 Billion by visiting the following link:
http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/100-billion/milestone-examples/
Furthermore, please consider that all ring games and every effect on the Road to 100 Billion Hand promotion is being closely monitored. Going back to the Rules and regulations of our Milestone Promotion:
“8. During the Promotion, strict rules regarding player behaviour will be enforced. PokerStars reserves the right to take action against any player found to be abusing any aspect of the Promotion. Such action includes, but is not limited to, exclusion or suspension from the Promotion or from the Client, and the confiscation of rewards earned as a result of the abuse. The decision on what activity constitutes abuse of the Promotion lies with PokerStars management in its sole discretion.”
Also, Milestone Hand Tips and Rules & Regulations for our Road to 100 Billion can be found by visiting our official site here:
http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/100-billion/
http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/100-billion/terms/
We highly appreciate the time you took to contact us with these details, and in turn we hope to have answered your question regarding this matter. If there is anything else we can help you with, please do not hesitate to write again as we will be happy to continue to assist you.
Thank you for playing at PokerStars and being part of the celebrations!
Regards,
Maj
PokerStars Support Team
---------------------------
my 2cents..
This is total bullshit.. but on the other hand the whole 70blth hand is BS..
u see team pokerstars and higstakes pros 24tlbing nl2 for starting 10mins before the milestone hand..
¨
So basically everyone tries to take advantage of it and scam the shit out of it.. I guess they had the best idea how to scam it, so they deserve it ??
Originally posted by lessthanthreee
you do realise they paid no rake while they folded to each other.
Yes, of course. I don't really see that as being any sort of issue whatsoever. If I'd folded all my hands at my PLO8 tables for the previous 50 hands, neither would I - and I still had an opportunity to hit the milestone hand. I certainly folded some playable hands in the last few minutes leading into the milestone hand. I'm pretty certain other players at my tables were too.
Anyway, this was a lottery promotion. It's not a promotion based on winrates, variant, number of opponents, size of pots, whether any hands made it to the flop/draw/4th street. Getting angry about someone winning a lottery because they gave themselves a, tbh, marginally higher chance of winning by playing within the rules is self defeating. Life is full of folks exploiting opportunity within the rules but outside the spirit of the activity.
There are significantly bigger issues in online poker driven by greed and actual fraudulent activity - I can't help but think this situation doesn't even rank on the spectrum of cheating. A far bigger and more insidious problem is players in MTTs getting live assistance from more experienced players to win big tournaments. This IS collusion, cheating and impacts heavily on the EV of the better players. I think if we looked hard enough we could find many examples of this sort of behaviour.
Originally posted by ZhiCheng
So basically everyone tries to take advantage of it and scam the shit out of it.. I guess they had the best idea how to scam it, so they deserve it ??
this 
fwiw. lets assume one of these guys was a ps.com coach. what would you think then?
I think some people are being soft because they are random busto's. if there were 2 high-stakes pros who did this and won there would be outrage and no-one would be happy that they scammed the system.
some of you might remember the >100% rakeback scam that chiren80 tried to pull a few months ago on the NL2 tables. another 'exploit' of the system. the guy figured out a way to get more than 100% RB by exploiting and he got all the funds confiscated.
both cases stars make a big mistake in a promotion. a very high profile person is punished and the unknowns win the money. part of the reason IMO is that a lot of people are praising them for being the best cheats. its not in the 'spirit' of the competition or the 'spirit' of poker.
but who cares, TOS mean nothing anyway. in the end of the day stars can do what ever they want for each scenario, its their money not ours.
stars can ban them, and conviscate their money, not only the cancel their reward but take everything they have in cashier, they CAN do it. but they wont. I wrote them a mail, they replied that the winner will be paid. so... they could not pay them and even ban them...what does this tell you? these 2 guys are inside staff @ pokerstars.. otherwise, stars is the most retarded online company, ever..tell me one good reason why they dont just keep their money and say it was a cheating...
Originally posted by SilverSag
Originally posted by kurrkabin
These guys outsmarted the system and there is nothing you can do about it. After all, in life you don't succeed with hard work only, but also by using your brains.They didnt really outsmart anything. They just increased their chances of winning ... The chance of them hitting that hand was still miserably small. Unless PokerStars WANTED them to win.
WANTED them to win?
I hope you're not implying they were pokerstars bots playing so pokerstars don't have to pay out the money, are you? 
That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?
Just kidding btw.
They definitely bent the rules.
But then again, so did every winning milestone hand i watched.
Everyone at a winning table insta shoves all in so as to increase the pot, there for increasing the prize money paid out, they also play stupid hands like 72off knowing that if they're in the hand they get paid.
Also, hands up who played 24 tables coming up the milestone hands.
I don't mean the 24 table regs, i mean people like me who normally play 6 or so tables comfortably, but who opened a few extra tables coming up to the milestone hands.
Maybe they shouldn't announce who won it until after the hand has been played.
That way a proper hand of poker would win.
I say good luck to them, it's not ideal and i hope pokerstars fix it, but i don't feel hard done by.
I played 4tables, countering the massmadness, hoping Karma would rape all the monkeys 24tbling nl2 by letting me win 
Originally posted by ZhiCheng
I played 4tables, countering the massmadness, hoping Karma would rape all the monkeys 24tbling nl2 by letting me winI slept through it hoping Karma would make it's biggest hit of all and make me win it without playing! ♠_biggrin:
btw what if 6 friends decide to do it on 6max tables next time? coz what ive heard is that mostly stars will prob exclude HU tables next time
Read about 2 pages of the thread with pointless insulting and arguements.
It's clearly colluding. No one plays like that. No one 24 tables hu cash. No one openfolds atleast the top 5% of hands in a headsup.
If pokerstars can catch people colluding that don't do it so extremely obvious don't you think they can see it here?
In the end it doesn't even matter. Because if you read the rules which were posted on page 2. It clearly states pokerstars can do whatever the fuck they want for whatever reason they want with the prize money. So if they say it's colluding and don't give the money then nothing can change that.
However i don't think they will ban them since it's negative publicity to admit this. Also the players don't payed any VPP last 50 hands so they get less money then someone who plays normally. One way to somewhat fix this is make the base amount of money less and the money you get from what you raked the last 50 hands more. But free money = free money so people will do it anyway.
I hope they do something like if a table doesn't pay any rake for ~15 hands it is closed. could be a bit more for headsup tables.
Originally posted by shane0878
Originally posted by SilverSag
Originally posted by kurrkabin
These guys outsmarted the system and there is nothing you can do about it. After all, in life you don't succeed with hard work only, but also by using your brains.They didnt really outsmart anything. They just increased their chances of winning ... The chance of them hitting that hand was still miserably small. Unless PokerStars WANTED them to win.
WANTED them to win?
I hope you're not implying they were pokerstars bots playing so pokerstars don't have to pay out the money, are you?
That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?
Just kidding btw.
As I said previously - they DO have control over which tables the milestone hand will be dealt. The fact that all 300 milestone hands were dealt on cash tables and not the tournament tables PROVES IT.
If they can control that, they definitely can control EXACT TABLE as well. If they want to.
Realistically its a marketing event and 70K is peanuts for them, so I do not think PS as a company cheated in this way. Especcially because they could chose another table (I would chose some micro stakes table without any regulars and make a huge story about it), not the one which causes so much controversy and grief. Thats no good for them.
Can an underpaid employee made this 70K present for him or his buddies? I dont know how tight security is there, so its for somebody else to judge. I hope not, but...
In the same way I hoped that random number generator (or whatever you call the "dealer" there) cannot be adjusted and fiddled with. That it runs in some closed room with ultra tight security and such, but it is apparenly not true.
If they can adjust it for marketing campaign, then they can adjust it to clash AA vs. KK more often, adjust draws not completing more often, big hands running into each other more often... just to increase the rake generation.
Don't we have enough "x site is rigged" topics already?
Allowing only cash tables to have milestone hand number (promotion was strictly for cash games) is something extremely easy to implement and proves in no way that they have "control" over which tables hits them.
