Creating a fair gaming experience for our members is our No. 1 priority. Due to circumstances out of our control, we were unable to provide a stable, fair gaming experience during the $1,000,000 GTD Winning Millions tournament. Many players timed out, while others remained connected.

Canceling the $1,000,000 GTD tournament was a heart-breaking decision. We worked arduously to bring poker back to America. We labored around the clock this week to try and sustain a stable environment for our players. We should have cancelled this tournament sooner, but we kept trying everything in our power to fix the issues.

We are committed to providing America with the GTD tournaments you deserve. We will succeed. We will fix the issues soon.
We will deliver a $1,000,000 GTD tournament on February 22nd, 2015.

To all our loyal members— thank you for your support. Your continued patronage keeps us fighting for you.

very disappointing

This wasn't a server issue, it was something similar happening to merge correct?

WinningCEO will be on Twitch shortly to make a statements and answer questions.

http://www.twitch.tv/justsomefish72

Hes not hear to answer questions.

Thanks for thee update. Best of luck for the next one.

Then stealing all them satellite rake dollars and making us players left still play for 5.5 hours when the servers were crashing 20 minutes into this is fair?

If I knew this was how WPN would handle this situation I would have forced myself to bust 15 minutes in so I'd get the same refund as them guys did cause I value my time.

Ya something very fishy cause the cash games are running fine with the tournaments cancelled.

Lets tune in and hear this one....

I give him credit for his candor.

When are the sng's coming back?

He keeps saying only 4 hours on twitch when it started at 3pm Eastern and wasn't stopped until 8:30pm Eastern. 5.5 hours sir!

He is saying 4 hours so that we can't say late reg should of been ended by then.

was that real?

As pissed off as i am at this site for a horrendous run of cards, I feel BAD! They tried their asses off. I have had the worst experience on this site as far as runs go and don't ever see myself a winner here but they do care about us and anybody who just followed winningceo cant help but feel his pain.

it was stopped with .5 hours left in late reg. That would make it 4.5

I'm talking about the actual time I am in the tournament which was from 3pm-8:30pm ET. The tournament clock pauses for breaks and all I get that but regardless of how someone counts this went on way longer then it should have.

Also when I was told by a supervisor about 45 minutes before the actual stoppage that an announcement was coming shortly they clearly knew the intentions were to stop it by that time yet they kept it going when the decision was already made.

Don't get me wrong I appreciate the effort to run a big tournament but WPN did not handle this properly.

The fact is they are stumped with how to correct the current attacks on the network and just thought the culprit was done when they aren't.

I still never heard a word back or got a dime for the sng tournament IDs I sent in last week which had problems.

I love how the CEO makes videos like this.

This is the first I've seen of it.

Makes me want to deposit on here even though I don't play online anymore.

if u have ended this way main event why u didnt do the same in other o.s.s. events witch ones was dicrupted by anyone.
when i play 33$,55$,215$ 540$ events i play them all the same..so here i get my $$ back but not in other ones..why?

I don't get the part about stealing satty rake dollars. Explanation por favor

This.

You had satty rake dollars to get the buy in. You are refunded the buy in (in cash if you want). So it would be the same as playing any tournament/sitngo

This was a really frustrating experience for me, but I think you made the only call and I am impressed with the response. Please get better DDOS protection, standard MTT schedule, and support and I will be playing here for a long time.

It's kind of difficult to explain and depends on how you look at it.

The network runs a bunch of satellites taking rake for them which the winners win are paid out in a seat but then the tournament don't run. They make several thousands of dollars off that and now the tournament don't go so they refund everyone but still are up all that profit from the satellites that went prior to it.

In order to make the guarantee people want to get in cheaper so yes this is a convenience for them but if you were to tell players they will play several satellites and spend a bunch of hours on a tournament that is going to be stopped would they do it just for the $540? Not everyone would and the people who didn't qualify may feel like they wasted their time on something that never was going to happen too which it did but the end result is like it didn't (if that makes sense).

I know it's a different way of thinking that many will say shouldn't be done but just saying.

Regardless, the biggest gripe I have is these hackers weren't going to stop attacking the network and it's wishful thinking that they would so why wait 5.5 hours (true time from the start not tournament clock) before stopping it if they were going to refund people like this?

The network hasn't found an effective way to combat these attacks it's just the attackers stopped hammering the servers for a few days to give the deception that all is fine now.

I'm not trying to completely bash WPN here and I enjoy playing on the network it's just I don't agree with how they have handled things. I do feel bad for them though cause these current problems are extremely stressful to deal and I hope they can find a way to get things back to normal soon.

I'm done rambling and ranting but just wish this went down better.

thanks for the update and candor.

we def appreciate the effort and ambition involved in this....and we are certainly disappointed by today's problems and the cancellation of such a big event.

i think in the future, you need to act immediately in these sort of situations.....an event of this caliber & magnitude should have never even reached the 2nd hour of play under these sort of conditions. even if it was just a portion of customers experiencing connection problems, by that point it was obviously widespread enough that the integrity of the "gaming experience" was at risk.


but I can also see this from the perspective of the site....with so much time/money invested into this event, it was probably an instinctive and natural reaction to try and fix things and "keep it afloat". its easy for us players to say you guys should have immediately abandoned it and admitted defeat.

I know you and others are beyond frustrated with what happened today. Im frustrated too and i didnt even play, but to claim they stole rake dollars is wrong. How about all of the free seats they gave away via freerolls or overlays in sattys? I dont hear mgmt saying they want that money back. Those winners were essentially given a free $540. Hell, they tried to give 2+2ers a few free seats. If you havent yet, watch the statement that the CEO gave earlier. Unless he is an Oscar level actor, you could tell how ****ty he feels. Im willing to bet he feels 10 times worse about how this went down than any player does. It just sucks for everyone involved