When Good Tourneys Go Bad - PokerStars Has Got Your Back

PokerStars Recovers Nicely from Major 'net Outage During Texas Hold 'em Poker Tournament

Ever wonder what happens if the Internet goes Kaflooey (that's a technical term) in the middle of a big tournament? If you think that would be bad for you as a player think about a site operator like Poker Stars with over 50,000 players at 10,00 various tables and tournaments at various stages of play.

Well it just happened to me and, the waiting aside, it was no problem. The whole thing was taken care of in about an hour.

When I first got disconnected I thought it was a problem with my wireless router and/or DSL connection but then a message from Poker Stars support scrolled through the chat window about a major disconnection. That was it for about 45 minutes. I killed the time by working on a budget for a trip this summer.

When we came back we were able to chat for a while. There was the usual wondering what happened etc. For reasons I'm sure everyone will understand I won't reproduce it here.

In the end, we got messages in the chat window saying the tourney would be canceled as per the Poker Stars Cancellation Policies.

A few minutes later I got an e-mail telling me our tourney had been rolled forward with 50% of the prize pool divvied up between the remaining five players and the other 50% given out according to chip count. It was a $10 SnG and I ended getting almost $20 back.

Nobody's happy about these kinds of problems but it's nice to know Poker Stars was right on top of it and sorted it out quickly and fairly. Well Done Poker Stars.

--PB--