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- Players frustrated by PokerStars outages throughout the day Sunday
- "Pure bullshit," one player tweets after blinded down to 1200 chips and getting a measley $1.20 return
- Site accused of allowing players from certain countries to keep playing, causing others to lose funds
Players Furious Over PokerStars Outage
The world's leading real money poker site, PokerStars, experienced massive outages throughout the day Sunday just days after other online poker sites suffered attacks. PokerStars would not elaborate on the cause of the disruptions.
The company issued this statement late Sunday:
"Please accept our apologies as we are currently experiencing technical issues. We are currently working on it and our services should be restored as soon as possible."
One angry player tweeted:
Pure bullshit. Guess ill be looking to go to @888poker after this shit. Server crash 14k stack. Blinded down to 1200 chips i get a whopping $1.20 return. Should of been when i had a 14k stack not 1200
Another tweeted:
yep, busted 4 tournaments myself whilst the dc was happening, money I'm never getting back I guessPlayers From Certain Countries Allowed to Stay In?
A number of players began noticing that those from certain countries were allowed to remain playing in tournaments, leading to some serious deficiencies.
One tweeted:
Stop letting certain countries stay in and steal our stacks
Another wrote:
Exactly. I was in 3rd place now I’m in 24th with 12k to the winner. All the same countries are stealing the blinds
katyapasya tweeted out with this video as proof:
@PokerStars how is this fair when the servers went down and we were out, all the Romanian, Belgian and Bulgarian players knocked everyone out because they did not have the same issue, please fix this!
Response and Cancellation Policy
"Please accept our apologies as we are currently experiencing technical issues. We are currently working on it and our services should be restored as soon as possible."
The company referred to its tournament cancellation policy:
"If we have to cancel a tournament for any reason, we make a concerted effort to compensate players in the fairest and most equitable way possible. There are three different possible compensation methods, depending on the exact circumstances and timing of the cancellation. Which method is applied is the sole discretion of the tournament Management."
These included rollback: If you were registered for the tournament, you get your buy-in and fees (including rebuys, add-ons, and knockout entry if any) refunded as if the tournament never happened.
Rolling forward is another option when there are no players in the money. If a tournament is cancelled and we do a "roll forward" before the players are in the money, we refund each remaining player his tournament fee (and knockout bounty if appropriate), and then divide up the prize pool based on the following formula:
50% of the award pool is distributed evenly among all remaining players
50% of the award pool is distributed proportionally according to the chip count
If players are in the money, rolling foward might also have their money refunded.
PokerStars notes that “Heads-up Sit & Go tournaments (HU S&Gs) are handled differently because of their special nature. Particularly if one player stays connected while the other player does not, the first player can effectively win the tournament while the second player is disconnected. For that reason, we reserve the right to do a chip count distribution of any HU S&G that we believe was substantially affected by our site's downtime.”
- Nagesh Rath, Gambling911.com
