GGPoker was forced to cancel its $150 GGMasters Anniversary tournament due to technical issues after the platform failed to perform with the massive field.
The online poker event, which featured a whopping $5 million guarantee, ended up on the hook with $100,000 in deposits. Scheduled to start on the 23rd of February, the tournament had more than 20,000 entries at the moment of malfunction, forcing the officials to postpone the event due to “system issues”.
GGPoker then rescheduled the tournament for Sunday, the 2nd of March, which initially went on without a problem, with 12,000 players remaining for Day 2. However, that’s when the real issues began, as the software experienced a malfunction with table balancing, with many players reporting that they were playing heads-up.
As soon as this happened, GG decided to pause the tournament in order to fix the problems. The first thing they did was restart the tournament starting from the blind levels at the start of Day 2, only to cancel the event altogether later.
GG came out with an official statement on Twitter, apologizing to players for the inconvenience and informing them that they had to make the decision to cancel the event.
After encountering further issues, the unfortunate decision has been made to cancel the tournament. We understand the inconveniences for players throughout, and we sincerely apologize.
Furthermore, GG said that it would refund all players who signed up for the event after some players were left annoyed that the technical problems could not be resolved when the first attempt to start the event didn’t work.
Many players weren’t satisfied with the refund policy, which is set to pay 50% to players “according to the chip count of the remaining players at the time of cancellation” and 50% of the buy-in players who stayed in the field.
One unhappy player took to Twitter to voice his dissatisfaction with the refunds:
Refunds (aren’t) good enough. What about the compensation on the time not over two days but the previous weekend. Not one person is happy with the refund; you still make rake, and we as loyal players should expect ICM chop of the remaining.
Another group felt that GG should try and fix the issue and then restart the tournament, with another player stating that the technical difficulties affected the stacks of some players during the first day, which then resulted in smaller amounts from the ICM shop.
Great, I am being shafted because I busted at the beginning of day two because I got forced to play HU (heads-up) and three-handed with the announcement obstructing the board and busted.
In related GGPoker news, Caesars Entertainment has announced that it has sold the WSOP poker brand to NSUS Group, the parent company of GG, for $500 million.
