I'll wait for Bobos response then but you do know you can just edit the names out in MS Paint, right?

I would like to clear up a few points regarding the matter raised above.

Global Poker routinely gives out free tournament tickets to players on Social Media.

This occurs through competitions on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. Our Social Media Team comes up with the type of competition that they want to run and manage the process. The method of picking winners is totally random.

All of these competitions occur prior to the tournament starting. This can be verified by searching through these pages as all competition posts are time stamped.

This week, a member of our Social Media team who manages our Facebook page noticed an overlay in the Sunday Scrimmage and posted about it on our Facebook Wall. In an attempt to use their own initiative. they chose five players that often speak publicly about Global Poker and proactively messaged them on Facebook Messenger. They offered them tickets to play in the most recent running of the Sunday Scrimmage. The event was in Late Registration at the time this staff member made this decision.

Global Poker was not aware of this staff members actions until threads like this one emerged and players contacted us via email. We immediately held an investigation and uncovered that five tickets had been given out during the Late Registration period. Three of the tickets were used to enter last week's Sunday Scrimmage. Those players entered the tournament during the Late Registration period. The other two are still in the players' account and are able to be used next week.

As part of the investigation, we have extensively interviewed the staff member involved. It has been determined that there was no malice in their actions, they were trying to use their initiative to support the company. They did not mean to cause any harm and did not consider the consequences of their actions properly.

The staff member in question feels extremely remorseful and ashamed by these events. They are one of our most passionate employees who loves both poker and the player base that he regularly engages with. A decision has been made that this experience has been punishment enough for the staff member and that a valuable lesson has been learned. No further action will be taken.

Additionally, we will not release the name of the players who received these tickets (although some have publicly identified themselves). These players have done nothing wrong. A representative of a poker site offered them a ticket to a tournament and they accepted it. There is no need for their names to be brought into this.

Global Poker stands by our position that we do not support giving players tickets to tournaments during Late Registration period. Whilst this occurred last week we can confirm that it was a one-off, has not occurred in the past, was not supported by Global Poker and will not occur again.

Thank you for your understanding on this matter.

Joey

Thanks for posting Joey!

Class response Joey

Acceptable response. Regardless if completely forthright the intent of posting was to get the practice either stopped or at least let buyin-er beware.

The number of entrants did jump from around 209 to over 230 (which is the number 50k is met at with $218 buyin and thus the number no overlay is owed) between the beginning of break and end of break. 3 was the number of people indirectly knew about + the player who said he received one. So I can’t prove more than 5. I was extrapolating that they aren’t likely getting 25 late regs during break.

Thank you Joey. And I agree if it was on off employee thing zero need for any repercussion to the employee. It’s obvious I never wanted or intended to release player names.

Strange situation, reasonable explanation, good communication.... huh... I have heard that stuff like this happens on the internet, I just didn't believe it was true.

All sarcasm aside, thank you Amateur_backwards for handling it all very well. Not sure that we agree on everything Global, but in this situation I think you provided a real service and that is to be commended.

Also thank you to Joey for the through response. Hopefully your bosses will continue to allow well thought out responses like this one in the future. I am sure there are times you wish you could say things and your hands are tied, and hopefully they will see how well this went and use it as an example going forward.

How did these bought in players finish?

I think this will bring doubt about house players, which is bad timing because players all uptight about HH's and "self policing" is one of the virtues of HH's

To be clear I like GP how it is - I just need to have %100 faith in their integrity.

This didn't help that.

I'm not sure it's even possible to have 100% faith in any online poker site. (Or anything else, for that matter.)

It should have helped. As someone who had been following the thread since the original post, I was almost certain there wasn't going to be a rep response as time went on. Although I am certainly not a fan of free tickets eating up the overlay (which according to a recent mailer was averaging 4800$ over a few weeks recently), it was a thorough and complete explanation, and they/he 100% owned it. I also like GP as it is, and part of that is the free tournament tickets they give away (to everyone but me apparently ). My "faith" is certainly stronger after the explanation.

Meaning if they did well clearly they are super users?

And if they did badly clearly it is all legit?

If so, that seems a bit to results oriented for me, but you do you.

meaning ---would ruetama have brought this to light if they were losing players??

I don't mind any player getting a free seat if done so days ahead of time, not so much when an overlay is about to occur. Let the players who bought in reap the benefits of being loyal players. (if GP gonna lose $ anyway)

How much "access" does this social media member have anyways, sounds like he/she wasn't necessarily a part of GP's staff??

The guy who claimed to get the ticket in the facebook group...

First few hundred games spiked some MTT's up to 3.5K
By 1K games hit 4.5K

The next 3.5K games on a slow decline to $3K...

Winning?

Yeah I don't have any thoughts one way or the other on if it would have gotten brought up if the tickets were given to complete fish. But I would like to believe it would have been brought up from a fairness point.

And even a complete fish in an NLH MTT still has a chance, as my two wins on Global can attest

They said winning cash game players

These tickets in my opinion were given to net depositors AKA losing players or twitch streamers. Why the hell would they give tickets to random cash regs? I didn't recieve one and never will. This goes for all winning cash players. Why in the world would they free roll you over a random losing player? And just because you are up a few bucks in MTTs means nothing.

where mine at doe

No player who I know received a ticket was a streamer.
No player that I know received a ticket was a net negative MTT player.
No player owed Global any % of any action (someone in NVG speculated this)
Yes I would have brought this up regardless who received tickets
I believe Global handled this well.

I suggested in my email to Global, which I think they’d agree was polite and constructive, that they reach out to a few well known and respected live professional MTT players as an “ethics sounding board” and gave them contacts for 2 highly regarded candidates. I hope they consider this suggestion.

Merry Christmas all.