From the OP:
It was never presented as an option that you could go with somebody else until they started getting lines to go and wanted to reduce the queue. Obviously if anybody knew they could play in groups, everybody would've taken this option. I watched several people play and they all played alone. To my knowledge out of the first few dozen entries, they were all solo players. I asked for a full run-down of the rules prior to going, and playing at the same time as multiple other people was never presented to me as an option.

How can you claim the "tournament organizers were forcing everyone to play solo"?
This OP wasn't one of those people. Nobody was forced according to this post.

Either "wywrot" had that same experience, or he had a different experience.. IF he had a different experience, he may have been unique.

I have to totally agree with Toilet Bowl.

This was totally PS fault and their decision to remedy it is so wrong. Freefall explained the situation to the person in charge of the event, a PS representative who hadn't a clue but represented PS in his decision making. He allowed it so there for PS should be held totally accountable for the real leaderboard.

They should remove any player info that had a 2 or 5 player advantage and pay out accordingly minus the extra buy ins of the players who had advantages. The 2 player advantage didnt abuse it so I guess they might not matter.

As regards to the players who had an advantage. I feel that the players knew they had an advantage which should void their play and shouldn't be paid the winnings if they like it or not. Instead, refund all buyins if they won or not. Another possibility would be to pay token double pay to the players who won who had an advantage and none to who lost with advantage.

This I feel would be appropriate. If PS already paid out the prizes to the wrong leaderboard and can't collect it back, I guess this is just the cost of business when they are in the wrong.

Also, freefall is delusional for justifying his stealing of 1200 dollars.

It's my dream to get out to the Bahamas and play w/ you sharks one of these years, but you all def should've gotten at me. I got a nice 400k play chip stack. Coulda shipped you on over a little somethin, in exchange for like a tiny little %.

Laughable to think that this did not occur.

1K for this stupid thing>?

Its a common misconception that *all* play chips consists of 3 or more players AIPF every hand. That may happen a bit at the lowest levels of play chips, but at higher levels, the vast majority are playing somewhat rationally, and that means not calling open shoves with less than JJ+ AQs+

However, I wouldn't call 100/200 play chips ZOOM all that tight or nitty either. A quick look at PS ZOOM lobby, its 30% Plrs/Flop and 30bb Avg Pot compared to 16% and 18bb at 2NL. There's quite a lot of limping in and min-raising and flat calling to see a flop. It usually takes a 6-10X bet to isolate, but an open or over bet shove is rarely going to get called.

What I find a little surprising, is that if you're plunking down $1K, multiple times for some, wouldn't it be a good idea to spend half an hour at a play money table and try out a few strategies to see what will work and what won't?

This.

Give a fixed BR, say 100K chips (5 Buy-Ins) and the total BR at the end of 12 minutes is your score. That way if you lose a couple of flips, you still have a chance to grind back.

Also, players should play with an inconspicuous s/n that cannot be known by anyone else to prevent chip dumping, slow-rolling or other angle-shoots. If spectators are allowed to "rail" they should be prevented from being able to relay the s/n to outsiders until the time limit is up.

Any of these solutions would be better than what Stars came up with. It sounds like I had the same sort of experience wywrot had, the possibility of playing with multiple people was obviously never presented as an option, and I don't think it was to anyone that played before the last day, Stars just threw that in there so they could get more entries from people on break in the 25k (as if any care about $ from this event anyway) and meet their guarantee on the last day. I'm going to Andy Dufresne this until Stars does something.

And for all the people saying how obvious and easy it would be to collude, it's a little harder than you'd think. you only start with 1k play chips max, so you'd have to grind up quite a bit to properly feed in this competition or know someone that has millions, which not many people playing this event do. Furthermore you'd have to coordinate playing at just the right time to feed the right entrant because we all played under the same screen name, and up until the last day you were playing up on a stage with at least a couple people watching, sometimes much more, so an obvious chip dump of say, raise to 19800 and fold would look super sketchy. Also, it's zoom, the player pool often had about 200 players in it, so odds you even hit the same table more than 5ish times in 12 minutes is pretty small. And at the time I played this there were only 17 entries. Was it possible to collude? Sure. But I went with my read and saw it as a safe side event that looked like it was getting over-layed a bunch and thought I could do a good job in.

I like that idea..

seems like itd be pretty easy for someone to text a friend "im starting now" and have their friend call them anytime they showed up at new tables. the whole tourney idea seems flawed to me- had never heard about this before. if its gonna run in the future it should be a 50% to charity tournament or something (so ppl dont expect to be +ev and cheating isnt worth much)

Good bump, Tom.

This was yet another example of Pokerstars dropping the ball while at a major event.

While not the same scenario as the Barcelona hotel mess, again we have the theme of something going very wrong at a major Pokerstars event, players going to Pokerstars for help, and the people in charge at the scene failing miserably.

Come on, Pokerstars. Time to hire a competent, intelligent person to be on-call 24/7 at these major tournaments to handle any major issue that comes up.

Also, Pokerstars never fully made this right with the affected parties.

Thought I'd point that out, as well.

Yes great bump and Kilowatt is on the mark again. Pokerstars blew this big time and the players deserve some compensation. This is like playing a speed tournament and putting Men the Master and 3 of his cronies at one table. It just can't be done.

What a bloody disaster.

Or else you will do what? Complain about it some more?

Not to troll this whole thing, because it obviously sucks when poker players get taken advantage of. And I don't think PokerStars is evil, or incompetent, or anything like that.

But it's mega-tilting to see these things go down and have the response by the poker community ostensibly be to whine about it. "It's bad PR" or "Massive PokerStars Failure" means nothing to PokerStars, and will result in no real action on your behalf, unless it's accompanied by them making less money as a result.

I would love to see some consequences for this.

But what would you like me to do?

Do you think it's better to NOT post about this stuff on 2+2, just because there isn't a regulatory body to slap Pokerstars' hands for it?

This is the most commonly used excuse in the world for inaction. And regulation has nothing to do with it.

Your first assumption about any business should always be that its first goal is to make money. Lee Jones seems like a nice guy IRL, but everything he says as a representative of PokerStars will always have PokerStars' interests in the forefront.

In bad situations like these ones, an effective company's goal is to minimize any negative impact on their business. In this way, Lee's job is very easy, because Stars can put on a good face, make a decent show of genuinely trying to help out, and suffer absolutely no consequences other than a pissy thread or two.

As durrrr pointed out in bumping this thread, PokerStars never made this situation right, and everyone forgot about it. They can rightly expect the same thing to happen in the future.

You are welcome to post about it in any thread - I'm always super-impressed to see just how quickly poker players can collaborate to figure out exactly what has gone on in a situation like this. And I'm disheartened to see that they then lay it on someone else to fix, and are surprised that nothing happens.

No, I just can't single-handedly motivate the poker community to join some kind of consumer watch organization, and be successful to the point where it has real power.

I agree that the situation is regrettable, but the problem is exactly as you say -- poker players for the most part are apathetic and live in the moment. It is hard to motivate them to do anything as a group. The best we can do is publicly shame the bad actors and use the "bad publicity machine" to force them (in some cases) to act right.

That's a hell of a lot better than just doing nothing.

Yep, like old Buddha and Jesus

prob the least skil based donkament ever?

Some people have morals and aren't really interested in cheating.

But i agree there are many who would take advantage of the situation.

This is why you shouldn't let any idiot to design a form of poker that is radically different from other forms of poker. It's not easy to see if it's possible to cheat. I previously outlined how it is theoretically possible to cheat at normal Zoom cash poker by colluding with other players without needing to know the identity of those you are colluding with in this thread.

Sounds like a pretty awful job. How about making poker knowledge a requisite for getting a job at PS?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that is required and I just find it odd the PS persons there didn't escalate and so it's a service management problem.

Edit: just saw this was bumped three days ago, already. Hope people don't mind the re-bump.

What a surprise.

Yet another situation where Pokerstars screwed people, then disappeared from a thread without any real resolution.

jerk