1eyedjack, on 2014-April-14, 13:02, said:
The fetching hands message is even more futile, as the hands are always already fetched at the point that the message appears
It depends on how fast the server is. It displays that message when it sends the request for hands to the server. If the server is fast, the hands may arrive while you're still reading the message. But if the server is sluggish, there could be a delay, and this message explains what's going on. It's a "just in case" message.
Instant Tournaments are different in this regard from ordinary tournaments or MBC hands. In the latter cases, the server creates the hands ahead of time, and it always has a pool of hands ready to hand out, so there's never any delay to warn about. But with Instant Tournaments, it has to perform a database search to find an old tournament that you didn't play in, and this could take a few seconds depending on the load on the database and the network.