A festive season poker tournament that went horribly wrong following a software glitch was belatedly resolved this week by the million player Poker Room.com. Cash removed unilaterally from the tournament winner’s player account was re-deposited as the poker room admitted its screw-up in a somewhat provocatively worded public announcement on the Poker Room forum.
The announcement was made amid mounting player criticism and came from Oskar Hornell, the founder of Poker Room.com, who wrote:
“Ladies and gentlemen, please put down your pitchforks and torches for a moment and hear me out.
“Looking back at the response we have had since running the Christmas Tournament, we felt it was necessary to provide our players with a resolution and an explanation to the situation we have encountered.
“On December 16th, PokerRoom.com held a tournament advertising a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000 and other prizes including PokerRoom.com merchandise. All promotional information given out to players stated the above information; players were able to view this in the promo section, through e-mails, and on the registration page.
“Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had planned for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately wanted to “lure” people in with that cash, as some posters have suggested, shouldn’t we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?
“The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused the information in our game client to change to read that this tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the tournament’s first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.
“After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to correct it by removing the sum that wasn’t supposed to be there. At the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like they would have added the same sum if it instead had been missing from the prize pool.
“We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since reconsidered. We have paid these players in full as of today January 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this from happening in the future. We would like to sincerely apologize to our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.
“Personally speaking, however, I must say that I’m a little disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems that some people just want to read the things that support their already formed picture of “the big, bad corporation ripping off the little guy”. But things aren’t always that black and white in reality.
“Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.”
Tournament winners found their confiscated winnings returned without explanation following the announcement and seemed pleased with the outcome, judging by comments on the Poker Room forum.
Prior to the announcement, InfoPowa had contacted the online standards and player protection body eCOGRA, where Poker Room.com parent Ongame is a member, to seek comment. The eCOGRA Fair Gaming Advocate advised at that time that eCOGRA had been in contact with Ongame but could not at that stage disclose further detail. This revelation was followed by Hornell’s public statement.