Online Tournament Cancellations After Long Game Play

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Online Tournament Cancellations After Long Game Play

We all know that playing some big tourneys take a long, long time. Hours, most of the day is usually a time frame that we would place aside to win some big cash. When a site goes down however, so does a tournament which can leave a person tilting more then imaginable and for a long, long time!

I am only just writing about an incident which left me more then furious! I imagine that anyone would have been. It didn't just leave me furious but also wondering. "I wonder if this will ever happen again, and worse! Worse if it is more money involved!" I suspect that not many people have had this happen, but it does, I assure you. Not too often thank goodness.

I was playing in a tourney, $15 + $1.50 buy-in and had been for hours. The bubble had well and truly burst with only 18 remaining. I was in the lead and at this stage no-one looked like catching me quickly, I was in the zone, on fire and chipped up!

It was break time, I went off to the bathroom, got a drink, got back and sat down to play as I cintemplated how I would finish the tournament off which would help pay for a new car. I was happy knowing that I was cashing pretty big for such low stakes. Then a message came up:

This table is being shut down by the system administrators

I couldn't click ok to make it go away and was scratching my head as to why they would shut down the table when there are 9 on it. I giggled at the stupidity and then realized it was possible that people had been cheating and that maybe that was why. If so, I was happy! Be gone with cheats in my opinion - I hate them!

A new message appeared:

This tournament has been cancelled for scheduled maintenance, as per policy your tournament entry will be refunded. Something along those lines. I didn't know what was going on. I looked at my account balance and there were a few hundred more dollars in it, I didnt understand what the heck had happened.

Suddenly the site went down and was unavailble, I was not impressed! I was yelling and screaming and seeing my visions of the grand win fade away. I had been paid a portion of the win which is why my account balance went up, the same portion as the other 17 players. I had also received my tournament buy-in back. Brilliant!

What do I want? A win and a nice cash for all my hard hours of work? Or - a few hundred bucks and a tilt like one wouldn't believe? Stupid question to ask really.

Regardless, in years of online tournament play, this has only happened twice to me. That's pretty good odds that it won't happen. It is obviously not going to happen during online majors (Sunday USA and Monday Australia) but it can! It took me a few hours to realize the chances of it ever happening again were next to none, at one point I was never playing a tournament again lol.

Anyway, when it happens on any site, you are compensated as per the terms and conditions which are pretty much the same on most sites. For the man or woman who has only 500 chips left, this is awesome as they get the same as the leader; who is obviously harder done by.