GGMasters 5th anniversary edition chaos
Back on February 23, GGPoker hosted the 5th anniversary edition of its signature GGMasters $150 tournament. To commemorate the occasion, the site boosted the guarantee considerably, promising a prizepool of $5,000,000. The players were excited by the prospect of a huge tournament and a potential overlay but when game-time arrived, the site crashed, booting everyone from their online tables.
the response is always the measure of the company in these spots
To say people were angry would be an understatement and many took to social media to voice their frustrations. To be fair to GGPoker, DDOS attacks, server issues and other technical issues happen and it was unfortunate that they did on such a momentous occasion. Reminiscent of what happened to Pokerstars on WCOOP Main Event Sunday back in September 2022, GGPoker was sent reeling but the response is always the measure of the company in these spots.
After a period of chaos and uncertainty, GGPoker announced that all the tournaments were cancelled and would be refunded as per the site’s cancellation policy, all except the GGMasters which would be paused until Sunday March 2. It was a reasonable solution but not a perfect one. What if a player was unavailable that day? Customer feedback ranged from sympathetic and stoical to acrimonious and irate but regardless, the show would go on. Or would it?
Table-balancing problems
Crash cut to last night and there were immediate issues as the tournament resumed for its Day 2. Some tables were playing heads-up. Others were short handed. It appeared that something was up with the table-merging functionality. The tournament was paused once again, with GGPoker acknowledging a table-balancing issue:
46 minutes later, players were updated with the news that the tournament was being rolled back to the start of Day 2 and re-starting from there.
It was clear, however, that the problems could not be fixed and 21 minutes later, a further update announced the cancellation of the tournament.
The players deserved better
Players will now be refunded based on GGPoker’s refund policy which splits the remaining prize pool, half being evenly split among the remaining players with the other half distributed based on chip count. This is a fairly standard approach to these types of situations for online sites.
A more serious charge against GGPoker is incompetence
The problem is the reputational damage that such an incident causes. Players of a more conspiratorial nature have pointed to the looming overlay and suggested that GGPoker’s problems were self-made. That’s obviously a silly accusation but there will be a few out there who give it credibility. A more serious charge against GGPoker is incompetence.
Being the victim of a DDOS attack or suffering a server malfunction is very understandable but having software which botches something as simple as breaking tables is not. Frustrated players who twice made time for this tournament have been enormously messed around and deserve more than the standard ‘here’s your half split/half ICM’ deal. They also deserved better than the poor and indecisive communication which confused matters at a time when clarity was needed.
Hopefully GGPoker find a way to make it up to them.