Strange hand history of the day: 200/0NL

A customer sent us a hand history unlike anything I’ve seen before. It starts like this:

***** 888poker Snap Poker Hand History for Game 542583455 *****
$200/$0 Blinds No Limit Holdem – …

See that big blind of $0? What to make of it?

When we receive a unique hand history problem, we need to work out whether this is a correct hand history, perhaps due to a new tournament variant we’ve not seen before. Often it is a bug.

In this case, it is indeed a bug. The hand’s expected big blind was $400. However the player in the big blind was so short-stacked that paying the ante left him with no chips. So he paid no big blind. Strangely 888 then indicated that the hand was a $200/$0 hand.

We’re working on a work-around as follows: if the hand is on 888poker and the big blind level is 0, then we’ll auto-correct it as twice the small blind. This will almost always result in correct data, and is a much better solution than showing the big blind is $0.