Online Poker Site PokerRoom.com Ignores Outcry From Poker Community

A widely publicized complaint surrounding OnGame Network's PokerRoom.com has been widely ignored by the company, but those who play online poker have already begun pulling their money out in earnest.  The OnGame Poker Network routinely ranks among the top 5 rooms, with PokerRoom.com among its biggest brands.  The majority of OnGame sites do not accept players from the United States. 

From the Two Plus Two Press website:

"On the 16th of December Pokerroom.com held a $20+2 Christmas tournament. When I went to the lobby of this tournament, it was listed as a 19k guarantee. As there were slightly over 200 players registered a few minutes before start, I, along with several other players, decided this overlay was much too good to pass up. The tournament also offered an HDTV for first and pokerroom goods for the rest of the final table.

"I won the tournament, which paid out $3,829.06 plus a $2000 HDTV. I then proceeded to run around the internet and my family telling everyone about my biggest score to this point. Two days later, I woke up.

"Monday morning I received an email from Pokerroom informing me that they had overpaid me for the tournament and were taking $3,400 out of my account. I logged in to find out that, while I slept, a major online poker site had indeed simply swiped several thousand dollars from my account."

PokerRoom.com has been made aware of the dispute but is yet to comment. 

One poker player points out that OnGame itself should not necessarily be blamed for the "questionable" tourneys.

"The tourneys in question were just at PR (PokerRoom.com's), not at any other skin. Whether Ongame or Bwin should have an interest is another matter."

BWin is a major online gambling firm based out of Austria that also utilizes the OnGame poker platform. 

PokerSource.com, a popular online gambling portal, does not see any grey area here:

"Some people may argue that PokerRoom.com made an honest mistake and should not have to pay for it. In fact, a company representative tried to compare the situation to if a bank accidentally double deposited into a customer’s account. Of course, the bank would have the right to take back money that did not rightfully belong to the customer. Unfortunately, this is not an accurate analogy.

"In the bank example, a customer would not reasonable expect to be able to keep the duplicate deposit. The customer knows it is not his. Same goes for if a store has a typo in an advertisement. Say, this same $2,000 television was advertised by a local store for $20 because two zeroes were accidentally omitted from the price. No reasonable person would think that the store was actually offering the item for $20 and would not be entitled to purchase the television for such an insanely low price.

"In the PokerRoom.com case, while a $19,000 guaranteed prize pool is rather high for a $20 buy-in, it is not by any means unbelievable, especially for a special Christmas promotion. The prize information was displayed for days leading up to the tournament, during the tournament, and is even still displayed on PokerRoom.com’s website to this day."

Until this issue is resolved, Gambling911.com would urge its readers to stay clear of this online poker room.

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Christopher Costigan, www.gambling911.com

Originally published January 2, 2007 11:55 am ET