While I do appreciate that I can now enter the 5k hands $10k freeroll after losing my hands last night, I am very disappointed that EVERYONE can now enter.
I'm sure this tournament was designed to be a way for Global Poker to gain momentum as a site, and gain traffic on the cash tables and it certainly has.
It was also supposed to be a way for those of us who completed the task of 5,000 hands a nice prizepool for our efforts.
Letting anyone who wants to enter has taken away A LOT of value from those of us who put in all the effort and time.
Is there no way to make this right without letting everyone enter?????

Wait, they are letting every single person enter now? How do you know this? If so that is a pretty big slap in the face to those that spent a ton of money in rake to be able to enter this contest, expecting a minimal amount of opponents.

So that is what caused the sudden increase in players. Hopefully something is done about this. I am sure they can manually register players. Why didn't they just manually register the ones emailing them about the missing 5000 flops ? Most the regs were already registered before the issue took place. It couldn't of been that many players affected. So it is not like it would have been a ton of work to manually register the players who earned a seat.

Upon logging in today and checking to see if I could now enter as support had asked me to when they responded to my email stating "The Poker team right away scrutinize the problem and was able to identify the root cause of it and provided a proper fix to solve the matter.", I took notice there were about twice the entrants I expected to see at the start time Sunday. Many names I have not seen before.
I asked a personal friend whom I referred to the site to see if he could register knowing he wasn't anywhere near 5K hands. He is entered. Support has also confirmed.

As support stated in the above quote they believe this is a "proper fix". I however do not and I'm certain those of us who have or would have earned our entry think otherwise also.

Wow that is completely unacceptable and a breach of their terms for this freeroll. We need to band together and demand a change or demand a different freeroll be offered to us.

Offer this "earned" freeroll, get tons of new traffic to the site, last minute change the terms and allow it to be a true freeroll and attract even more customers and screw over the people that paid rake to earn an entry. Disgusting business tactics.

This is being discussed between some of the regs at the cash tabels atm. A few aren't too happy and rightfully so.

If this is the case that they just let everyone in, that is completely unacceptable and OUTRAGEOUS.

GLOBAL POKER explain, is this true?

You screwed up the counter resetting it, the answer is to manually check the play history for players claiming they were at or close to the 5K hands, not just let everyone in. What is wrong with you people?

Yes I worked hard to get my 5K hands (and was registered before the counter reset), and I am irate now they let everyone in. OUTRAGEOUS.

It's confirmed, they let everyone in. Turning out to be a joke of a company. This isn't the first time they have done some shady **** (cancelling tournaments) in the name of technical difficulties.

Alright this may be a bit long but the people who actually earned their way into this freeroll and global, bear with me.

First I am so angry. This should have been a nice reward for those of us who put in the time and volume at 50nl+, this would be a limited field size with a nice prize pool as a reward for our action. Talk on the tables today has been very negative from the regulars who have been regulars together through this promo grinding our 5000 flops. To put it bluntly, we are being screwed out of our reward.

I got an email from global in response. I'm going to quote part of it as it rubs me wrong:

"We perfectly understand where you are coming from and we would surely feel the same if we are on your shoe. However, the decision made by the management is for the benefit of the majority. This is the best option we have while facing the unwelcome situation and therefore, the Global Poker team chose what will benefit the players the most."

I do appreciate you guys are in a tough spot, but this management decision simply does NOT benefit the right people. It's a huge slap in the face to those of us that gave the requisite action to earn our way into this game. We don't benefit. There would likely have been another 10-20 players who would have qualified after the reset had it not occurred. They benefit to an extent. In a sense it benefits "the majority" because the majority of your players didn't earn it. What an atrocious decision imo. What SHOULD have happened is each player who emailed support about the counter reset, claiming they earned their way in, should have their account history reviewed to verify. You don't have to count every single hand they played... to achieve 5K hands at 50nl+ required a level of volume that would be easy to see just eyeballing the history. Most players that weren't playing those stakes or not close to qualifying wouldn't be emailing support anyway, only those close and checking their progress would be. Either global doesn't have the ability, the manpower, or the inclination to make these reviews.

I could continue being critical here and lord knows I've had to restrain myself from taking out my frustration on the global reps here who didn't break it and didn't make this call, but have to deliver the news and take the brunt of everyone's anger (that would be from those of us who gave you the action over the past couple weeks, not the freeloaders who are now getting a piece of our promised pie). BUT that will not solve anything or make it right going forward.

So with that said, I have a proposal for the Global Poker team. Maybe you even have something like this in the works. I invite the other regulars who post here and are getting shafted like me to share your thoughts on this. So here it goes:

Run another freeroll just like this one, but kick the prize up this time. 15 or 20K, as an apology to those of us who put the time and volume in and generated all that rake for you. Because you know what, if you do that we will put the volume in again.

Think about it... the people harmed here are those of us who gave the action and earned our place, and Global for having egg on their face. This proposal benefits both parties:

The Players: We get another opportunity at a small field/big prize pool. We did the volume once, I assume most if not all would be willing to do it again and would be happy with some extra love in the prize pool as an apology.

Global: The generous gesture helps save some face, and the new freeroll helps continue to drive the 50nl+ action. IDK how much rake you generated during this promo but it had to look pretty nice. It would only be better for you with 15 or 20K on the offer. No doubt you picked up some new players during this series that came in too late to make the 5K hands this time around but would have a go for a 20K freeroll. You may even generate enough rake to cover it completely.

Of course the best solution is just identifying who actually qualified but given the decision to open the game to everyone it's clear you aren't willing or able to do that. I think the above would be a nice alternative.

Oh, and whoever it was that couldn't count the days between the counter going active and Sunday's freeroll, needs a new job. This kind of error is just inexcusable for the marquee freeroll of your series. That should have been double and triple checked, especially after the error with the first 1K counter at the beginning of the series.

One other thought I had, perhaps Global is willing and able to identify the right players, but doesn't have the ability to manually enter them into the freeroll.

If that's the case, idk what they should do going forward. Maybe make the programming so players can be manually entered by support. If it's fully counter driven maybe give them the ability to manually apply a new counter to an individual or manually add hands. If there's no alternatives, then you need to be super careful the counters are set up to function properly to begin with. For a big promo like this, maybe have a counter that doesn't have a programmed reset but has to be manually shut down or reset by a manager so they can just simply do it after the game launches.

Here's where I stand on the issue at hand, and hopefully my explanation can shed some light for the decision makers at Global.

When looking at the series when it was posted, there are a few tournaments that stood out with you being a start up site. Very ambitious and very generous on your end. This 10k freeroll is one of them, entry into it is playing stated stakes and being dealt into 5k flops (which in itself the way you word it is a bit misleading).
FF to 2 days before the allotted time to gain entry ends/ There are 42 registered last I looked, and during my play at the tables this last 3 weeks I'm figuring around 50ish players being entered, MAYBE 75 tops. Myself and AT TOPS IMO 75 others have put in the hours at the table to see 5k flopped hands.
A software error, or an error made by someone who created the counter, or whatever happens. THE VALUE OF THIS TOURNAMENT IS NOW NOT WORTH WHAT IT WAS 3 WEEKS AGO TO PUT FORTH THE EFFORT OF GAINING THE REQUIRED HANDS! I don't know how else to state it. I MAY have been playing these levels, but DEFINATELY would not have played the number of hands I did if I had known it would have been a freeroll OPEN TO EVERYONE.

As much as I would have been pissed off (actually if this was the decision I would be less than what I am right now), I WOULD HAVE RATHER MISSED THIS TOURNAMENT COMPLETELY because I was not registered and let those who have already registered play for what THEY HAVE ALREADY EARNED. It's not so much about allowing those not registered entry, it's about allowing those that already were the chance to play for such a prizepool with a small field for their efforts.

Being a startup site I do not expect the site to run smoothly, but THIS DECISION IS NOT CORRECT. Reward those who have made this series happen.

And I also think it's funny this is still in the tournament lobby:
"To be eligible to play this $10,000 freeroll, all you have to do is see 5000 flops in 24 days at minimum 0.25/0.50 limit at our $weeps cash game tables. Startingchips 10000."

Do what is right Global, reward your VALUED players.

/rant

I agree. If you don't get to the 5k mark, you should NOT be in this tourney.

The players that did make it worked their behinds off for weeks to get there... they should be the only ones in it.

Just make the 50k tourney a freeroll also

Whole situation is ridiculous. They really thought this would be the best course of action after they had an issue with the counter? They generated a ton of cash game rake that otherwise wouldn't have been there if it weren't for this promotion. Then to pull the rug out and change the terms at the last minute is at best mind boggling, at worst it is fraud. Luckily they are in the wild west world of online poker and won't have legal repercussions. As for myself I am about fed up with the incompetence and/or shady behavior.

You've got to be kidding me. I just did 4K flops in the last 5 days or so cause it looked like 50-60 entry's. You call it a free roll but that's not the way I see it. I one hundred percent would not have played half as much as I did if I knew this would be the case.

I can confirm they're not letting in brand new non depositing accounts at least.

new depositers cant get in either as i can't register. (deposited this morning)

I doubt there would have been much more then 60 players in this game. Majority were already registered. As regs we know the screen names we play day in and day out.

I been saying from the start of this mess that they could have manually registered those who emailed complaining. Only those who were over 5K or near it would be sending in emails. Manually registering those players would be a better option. Even if it means a handful get in that didn't make the 5K hands.

I am sure they would be running this promo again. So giving free entry into the next one to the ones that missed would be another option. Not the greatest option but better then the current.

Giving the ones who missed out on registering free entry into the 25K would be another better option. I think this would have been the best option if for some reason GP can't manually register players to tournaments.

If you can't manually register players ( I have never heard of a site not being able to do this ) You could of set up another freeroll with the equity value of the combined players that got shafted based on the 10K freeroll and issue tickets to those players only.

If the site can't see what players flopped what due to the timer resetting at the very least GP should be able to see what player generated xxx amount of rake for the month. It wouldn't be hard to find an average rake generated per 5000 flops and use that number to determine if someone earned a seat.

I do understand it is likely frustrating on Global Poker part as well and I am not as upset as others but do agree with them.

The solution is unfair to everyone. The ones who earned the seat. The ones who lost money chasing that 5K and the ones who lost money and didn't make it.

All that being said ... Do not change your decision and unregister players that didn't earn the seat. Do not cancel the tournament. You can't clean a mess by making another one.

Canceling the game and rescheduling after a solution was found would have been an option when the problem first occurred but once you let everyone into the game, I don't see canceling as a positive solution anymore. It likely causes you more problems.



Good Luck in the tourney's today everyone !

With this decision, Global Poker really screwed the players who grind and put in the time and effort to qualify for this tournament.

This is your first tournament series which was full of glitches and mistakes on your part as a provider. I hope you take these comments and concerns seriously and strive to improve on your next series. From what I have seen you guys have been real responsive to try to provide good customer service and your product has got marginally better since your launch.

You have a little ways to go but if you can improve on this model, I believe you can easily become the go-to site for the U.S. market.

I estimate 60-70... there were 46 in when the counter reset.

Now there's 224. Great management decision, those of us who actually qualified properly to play this also happen to be your biggest customers, we obviously generated the most rake for you during this promo. Way to thumb your noses at us. Brilliant.

I can say this.. I was short some hands (133) when they put the counter at 5k for me.. but I did grind enough last night so that I DID hit the 5k for the entire time period.

I don't think anyone is complaining about players with 4000 + flops getting in after the counter reset. Those are the ones that were going for the goal ... its the other 180 + players that had no intention of completing the 5000 flops.

Had no idea till I read this - I ran right over and registered and it let me in with 958 hands completed as of last time I looked last thursday.

Thanks Global!!!

This is some pretty foul ****. I played about 15,000 hands of $50 $100 and $200 nl during this promotional period. Now I have a to play a bingo trny for 6 hours to have a very small % chance to win maybe $100. This is disgusting. A rakeback program should be set up if this is the way things are going to be handled. If I played the same amount of hand on ACR poker I would have earned a nice little rakeback bonus. UGHHH!!!