The Big Christmas Tourney that wasn't

I don’t know if you guys have heard about this already. But I thought it was a good poker story to share since it could happen to anyone of us. I was somewhat involved so I know some of the facts personally. It just goes to show that all these offshore online poker sites need additional regulation. And that our online bankroll may not be as safe as we thought it was.

Last December 16, Pokerroom (http://www.pokerroom.com/) held its Big Christmas Tourney I. It was a $20+2 buy in tourney and they advertised a nice HDTV worth $2000 as an extra prize for 1st place. I wasn’t really planning to join this tourney as it coincided with the Grand Tournament which I qualified for (see previous blog below).

But during the actual day, since I was already up, I was just browsing the tournament info page and checking how many participants joined. Here is what I personally saw, there were about 250 participants, 10 minutes left to join and in the prize pool section below, it said $19,000 Guaranteed.

I did a quick calculation, 250x 20 is only about 5,000 dollars and they are guaranteeing $19,000. Wow, great value for money I thought. So I decided to register.

I busted out pretty early when I re-raised all in with my AQ when I flopped Top Pair against this guy who I thought was bluffing but who actually got 2 pairs. Anyway, that was that, and I just shrugged it off and proceeded to continue playing the Grand Tourney.

Checked back later and saw that it was over and 1st place paid if I’m not mistaken $3,800 plus the HDTV worth $2000. Not a bad payout for a 20 dollar buy in.

Here’s the kicker. Pokerroom claims that they made a mistake. It wasn’t supposed to be a $19,000 Guaranteed Tourney. They claimed there was a technical glitch which caused the error.

So you know what they did after a day I think. They took back the overlay winnings from the account of all the winners. YEP. Just arbitrarily took it out of the player’s account. Imagine being the 1st place guy and going to bed with a happy smile knowing you have $3,800 in your poker account and waking up the next day and discovering you only have $400 which is what he should have won without the guaranteed amount

WOW. This is the 1st time I heard of any poker site doing this. The last time I heard something similar was when Pokerstars confiscated all the money of Zeejustin, a famous online player. But that was different, Zeejustin was caught cheating. Played in same tourneys using 2 different names.

These guys won fairly. It wasn’t their fault that the poker site made a mistake. Anyway, there was a big stink over at the forums. I think 2nd place guy or 3rd place guy already went on a shopping spree using their credit card knowing they have that amount in their pokerroom account.

Geez. 11finger and the other guys in the pinoy league was telling me how bad the customer service in pokerroom was. But never really had anything to complain about since I made most of my winnings here. But this one takes the cake.

Anyways, after all the complaints, here is what Pokerroom did. They credited back $10+1 tickets to all the participants of the Christmas tourney and credited $100 to the accounts of all the ones who made it to the final table. Heheh …. Sort of like a “consuelo de bobo”…… but ironically, this was like essentially admitting that they fucked up.

So I’ve now got a $10+1 ticket sitting in my account. I’m ok with it since I busted out anyway. But others are not happy. They want the full buy in back, because they claimed they wouldn’t have joined if they knew it wasn’t going to be a 19,000 guaranteed. They certainly have a valid point.

But I feel for the guys who made it ITM. I don’t think they are accepting this small “bribe” and will continue to fight this which they should. One of the winners said that this was his first big win and that he already told all his friends and relatives … and now this.

I’m not sure what happened lately … But I’ll keep this thread updated to see what the final action of Pokerroom was.

My personal opinion : PAY THEM what they won, you morons. Swallow the loss and fire the stupid programmer. The bad publicity alone from this is gonna kill your site which is already suffering when you banned the US players. I am a small time player but I have already decided to withdraw my bankroll from pokerroom because of this. How can you now trust these guys with this incident ? Scary shit.