Apparently nosebleed play money players aren't as well connected as it may seem.

you can just by the chips off the internet

wow i can't believe nobody got a friend with 1M chips to dump it to them

I am all about innovation in tourneys...but at 1K buy in...this would seem to be a pretty big snafu.

You have the multiplayer issue...you have the chip dumping/collusion issue (at no cost to the colluder for the chips)

I just hope Stars puts more thought into it when they try something new again.

Pokerstars should do the right thing here and refund all solo entries. I feel the brand is doing everything right, so this is indeed a rare mistake by them. For the record, I did not play the event. Things like this happen when you run an event for the first time. It's definitely a great concept.

There are all sorts of ways you could innovate. Have a half-pot limit HM tournament or whatever. This idea is kind of bizarre. Think it would be obvious there would be all sorts of problems. They post there tentative WCOOP schedule on 2+2 sometimes. Think it would have been good to post this or had it reviewed by some internal committee or whatever. Also, most of the people who played this, what were they thinking?

#HUDSINPLAYMONEY

Wow, my friend just linked me to this thread. My story: I was hanging out in the players lounge the 2nd to last day of the competition after busting another tourney really early and I was watching a couple people play the zoom challenge and they were pretty awful strategically and the event only had something like 21 entries with a 50k guarantee. I thought I could do better and the value of a likely overlay was enough for me to give it a shot. I ran well and played a great strategy to take over the #1 spot on my 1st try with 86.4k I can absolutely agree with the OP in that they were INCREDIBLY nitty. The hardest part of the whole competition was to get people to gamble or get in large pots with any sort of equity. I was having to do things like raise 4-5bb's or get in 97o against a 4 bettor just because none of my open shoves were getting called. I go in the next morning and see that Mike Mcdonald had surpassed me as well as a couple other people which was disappointing but I was told they were paying 7 spots so I figured eh I'll probably get 5k or so out of it which would really help to save an awful trip. I played online all day Sunday and didn't hear anything about it, I go to the players lounge on Monday, it was all cleared out, I talked to a stars representative that said all the winners had been contacted and I was pretty baffled at how I could not have at least cashed, but I had to accept it. I couldn't find the results anywhere online so I had her email the guy that ran the event to find out where I finished and I got this.

Hi Maria and Dylan,

I have attached the top 10 finishing places (including chipstacks) to this email for your reference.

I regret to inform you that unfortunately you were the bubble in this event, finishing with 86,417 chips.

Should you have any further questions, or feedback, please do not hesitate in getting back in touch.

We hope you enjoyed the PCA, and thank you for playing the Zoom Challenge

David Williams 1st 175353 $20,650
Mohsin Charania 2nd 162517 $12,980
Tom Lutz 3rd 135643 $7,670
Elliot Smith 4th 126264 $5,605
Marvin Rettenmaier5th 123173 $4,130
Jeffrey Gross 6th 98588 $2,950
Mike McDonald 7th 91455 $2,655

^^^^All of those top 7, that's right, ALL of those top 7 happened on the last day of the competition, and notice how some are double or more what the top scores of the first half of the field were, what a weird coincidence

So naturally when I saw this thread and heard about what happened the last day it all makes sense now. I'm absolutely livid about this, I can't believe the people running this could be so blind as not to see such a HUGE and obvious edge they were giving the people going in groups the last day. I feel totally robbed, not just of a 1025$ buy-in but a solid 2-13k cash (What would be my only of the entire PCA), I legitimately played it solo, had a hard time building pots and got lucky to finish with the stack I did. I'm so mad about this, they even had the nerve to try to sweep this under the rug after they knew they messed up. If Stars doesn't do something substantial, they're going to lose a mighty lucrative customer here, I'm one of the few suckers that played their gimicky side event in the first place.....

lol you're not going to quit playing on pokerstars if you really are a "lucrative" customer