Why do strange poker hands go viral?

Over the weekend, a bizarre hand went viral in the poker world, featuring poker vlogger Abby Merk.

In the hand, Abby makes an ambitious 400bb bluff with A5s and her opponent, Susan, with 66 asks if she wants the call. Abby replies, "Not really," then, after the hand, expresses a little awkwardness that she had announced a clue about the strength of her hand. Susan eventually makes the call and wins the hand, and Abby continues to hint that she feels uncomfortable about what had happened. The way she reacts would suggest that she thought she was being angle-shot in some way. Afterwards, clearly frustrated, she announces she was only going to buy back in for the minimum and didn't want to play anymore.

It's a strange hand, which I think went viral not because of the ballsy bluff followed up by the ballsy call, but by the fact that a mountain appears to have been made out of a molehill. What's most surprising is this is a thoroughly standard aspect of table talk, and Susan was in no way out of line or rude. It was about as normal as it gets in poker.

Yet amazingly, the initial clip of this hand, when it was shared on social media, has garnered over 1 million views. Over the weekend, it also launched hundreds of memes and comments, which were overwhelmingly in support of Susan and mostly perplexed that Abby had made this a thing at all.

What may surprise poker fans the most about this is that this was just in a $1/$2 game at the Lodge, probably the lowest and most stress-free stake one can play in live poker.

High stakes, lower views

Contrast this with last week's $20 million heads-up match between Aussie Ketola and Patrick Antonius. This was, on paper, the largest televised cash game in poker history (if you believe the stakes). Yet, the Triton video for that on YouTube only managed 326,000 views (it was also shared on other platforms). In poker terms, this is a bit like a Champions League final getting lower views than a local Sunday league football match.

There is an even more bizarre example of this from poker YouTuber Wolfgang Poker. The most watched poker hand in YouTube history is the one below, which has attracted 112 million views. What's most surprising about it is that it is the most mundane, standard hand with no drama or surprises along the way. In fact, it almost looks AI-generated.

It may have the most views, but this is not the most interesting hand of poker. It's probably not even the best video on YouTube on Wolfgang's channel. An uncharitable interpretation would be to suggest the views were bots, but at a minimum, this is just an example of an algorithm being exploited rather than a reflection of what the poker audience wants. Wolfgang himself said one of the reasons that his channel blew up is because he started filming shorts in portrait mode, which is how the average user uses YouTube.

Exploiting the algorithm

Either way, there is definitely a disconnect between the best poker on screen and what actually captures the poker community's attention. I think the reason why the hand with Abby went viral was not because it was entertaining, but because it's precisely the sort of hand which gets people to reply on X.

When I'm not writing, I do some social media work on the side, so I'm afraid I'm one of the boring people that has actually studied the X algorithm, which gets publicly shared whenever it is updated. The long story made short on this one is X prioritises content that gets replies. Replies are perhaps the number one engagement metric on the platform and most likely on the other social media platforms too.

The reason why the Abby hand went viral is the same reason why the Wolfgang hand is the most viewed hand on YouTube, by exploiting the algorithm of the platform. On X, the audience was incentivized to reply to the strangeness of the situation and also because Abby is quite a polarising figure in the community.

In both cases, the algorithm doesn't show us what we necessarily want to see, but what it knows we will react to. If you don't believe me, go on X yourself and post a poker hand history where it was a close decision. It will likely be the most viewed thing you post this month because it's precisely the sort of thing that encourages people to reply.