PokerStars under fire due to massive DDoS disaster
Pokerstars is under fire for their handling of a possible DDos attacks during the busy Sunday Grind period and today.
Players are up in arms over the unfair cancelation policy, which saw some players collecting more than first prize.
Tournament Cancelation happened too late
At around 10 pm CET players from all countries, except Romania, Belgium, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic began to get disconnected from the Pokerstars server due to a huge DDOS attack. That wasn’t enough to stop the action though.
The bosses thought it was fair to allow players from the four remaining countries to steal all the chips. This went on for almost an hour before the tournaments were paused.
Late cancellation led to unfair payouts
Eventually it was decided that the tournaments would be cancelled, with refunds given out according to the current policy. This is where the trouble started.
The policy is a distribution of entry fees according to how many chips a player had. What Pokerstars didn’t comment on, was why they had let the tournaments run on for so long with ongoing issues.
Players from mostly Romania and Belgium were allowed to steal chips for over 40 minutes and this translated into huge payouts. Sometimes more than first place offered before the start!
Someone else just tweeted a better picture. Sunday Rebuy $50k gtd & someone tweeted to say it’s still on the lobby pic.twitter.com/DBWLAZPGNe
— William Bishop (@WilliamMBishop) 12. August 2018
The situation with the Sunday Million was embarrassing too:
@PokerStars you mean its normal?! wtf pic.twitter.com/YACt3fXp3o
— NesY==RARo (@blackyatellem) 12. August 2018
In the $33-Rebuy there were only 32 players left in business, but that didn’t stop Pokerstars scoring a ridiculous own goal. One single Romanian player was able to scoop enough blinds and antes to take home more than 50% more than first place money.
Please explain me, how can this occure. 2 Belgian players got more money as if they would have won the tournament. BTW we were 19 players when the site crashed, I had 20 BBs, and my stack simply got stolen. Please refund us properly. pic.twitter.com/D92epnDf9o
— Szász Csaba (@csaba333) 12. August 2018
How can Pokerstars justify this resolution as anything close to fair?
DDoS attack not over yet…
This afternoon it sounds as if the attacks are not over. Pokerstars are tweeting that they are experiencing an unusually large volume of disconnections once again.
We are currently experiencing a large volume of disconnections. All tournaments have been paused and will be cancelled or rolled forwards according to the formulas listed here: https://t.co/r2mtIaOEmh. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
— PokerStars (@PokerStars) 13. August 2018
With all the extra rake that they are charging one would think that they would at least get a better grip on their customer service.
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