China to ban poker video games
We recap some big stories including the biggest ever Irish Open and PokerStars have dealt 2 million hands an hour for a decade.
China to ban poker games
Social poker games will no longer be for sale in China following new rules set out by the Chinese government. Mahjong will also be prohibited, as will games inspired by China's 'imperial past' according to TechCrunch.
Poker and mahjong are popular mobile games in China and this will affect around 37% of the 8,561 games approved by the government previously in 2017.
It is yet another roadblock for what everyone in the poker industry hopes will one day be a Chinese poker boom on the global stage.
Zheng wins biggest ever Irish Open
A staggering 1,807 players entered the Irish Open over the Bank Holiday weekend, creating its largest ever field (but not largest ever prize pool as the buy-in has changed over the years).
Weijie 'Zervi' Zheng of Galway took it down for €300,000 at a final table that included SnapShove creator Max Silver.
It may have been the biggest field but it was certainly the shortest heads-up match in Irish Open history, just this one hand below between Zheng and David Masters:
PokerStars deals 2 million hands an hour
More impressive work for us stats geeks courtesy of pokerfuse as Nick Jones crunched some numbers to work out how many hands PokerStars has dealt per hour over the last decade.
The tweet thread below is worth reading in full but basically he worked out based on the timings of the Billion hand promotions over the years that PokerStars has been consistently dealing 2 million hands per hour for a decade.
This is uninterrupted by many landmarks including Black Friday, Australia leaving the market, SuperNova Elite removal, Stars Rewards and more.
PokerStars has announced its 200 billion hand promotion. This gives us a rare glimpse at the rate at which PokerStars deals real money online poker hands.
Incredibly, PokerStars has been dealing 2 million hands an hour, every hour... for ten years.https://t.co/ocpRT4Itqt
— Nick Jones (@pokerprojones) April 18, 2019
In despite of all that, according to the milestone data PS has been dealing hands without burst or faulter.
- 17.5 billion hands a year
- 1.5 billion a month
- 48 million hands a day
- 2 million hands an hour— Nick Jones (@pokerprojones) April 18, 2019
The joy of laddering
Finally, Twitch shows us so many glimpses into the highs and lows of online poker, and today we have the joy of laddering, courtesy of AllInPav:
2 million hands per hour? Can you believe that? Let us know in the comments:
