Last night all tournaments running suddenly crashed. I was in a 1 rebuy and 1 addon tournament with the chip lead at the time and was down to about the final 30 players out of the 120 player field. I also did do one rebuy and one add on as did many people judging on the size of the prize pool vs the number of entrants. I assumed the prize pool would be split between remaining players and the money would be automatically credited back to my account like every other poker site does in this situation. It wasn't there still about halfway through today so I emailed them and was told "we're sorry for the inconvenience. We have refunded the initial buy-in back in to your account." I obviously replied that that wasn't good enough because I was primed to make a deep run and they only refunded me one third of what I put in to the tournament. To which they replied "our terms of service only allow us to refund the initial buy in. I hope you understand."

...No I don't understand. Basically what I've gathered from all this is they only refunded people who contacted them. All the tournaments running had crashed. And they pocketed all the rebuys and addons from all the running tournaments. Along with all the entry fees and rebuys and addons from eliminated players. Global poker made a pretty nice chunk of money last night with that website crash and I've never seen a poker site handle this situations more poorly.

Not a huge fan of the click bait headline, we aren't the register here. With that said, I agree just refunding the initial buy-in seems like it isn't the correct way to handle things. What is your username on the website and I can pass along a PM with your username to Global Support on here.

My username on Global Poker is the same as it is here. TinaAlane.
And I could see how the headline does seem like click bait but in my opinion that is pretty much what happened. There is thousands of dollars paid into the tournaments from last night that they have no interest or intentions in returning to the players. That in my opinion is theft.

using successfully is just wrong as it implies that the site purposefully crashed the tournaments so it could take all the buy in money. You catch more flies with honey op.

Zecko took the words right out of my mouth, better to attract flies with honey. I can totally see if from your side, and were I in your shoes, and that is how things went down, I would have similar feelings. But I would choose to say things like,

"Something strange happened..." or "I am sure there is just a misunderstanding, but I do need this cleared up"

Its always wise to leave people a graceful way out. With all of that said I did sent a PM on your behalf and pointed to this thread. Likely because of your low post count you won't be able to send a PM yourself, but soon you can take that avenue as well. I think they will get everything resolved, and obviously let us know on here how things are going.

Points well taken. I would edit the headline on the post if I could figure out how to.

It takes sites time to go back through these kinds of things and send the $, even the more established ones that have dealt with it many times and have policies in place. It's entirely possible this is the 1st time GP has had this come up, and that their TOS aren't up to speed with ICM prizepool (if you know what that means) payouts when games shut down.

Be patient, nobody is stealing anything from anyone.

Hi TinaAlane,

Let me look into this for you.

Click bait. If it is in the TOS that they are only able to refund initial buy ins, you have nothing to complain about TBH.

At least GP doesn't crash as much as ACR. You know how many times I have had my money refunded on there?

+1

No. Just no. That is not legitimate business.

"Sorry our servers crashed, so we're going to f*ck you over since we wrote it into our terms of service..."



That's not going to work.

Similar thing happened to me with a sit-n-go. In the "Lauren" $50 sit-n-go, I had over half of the chips, and was primed to win 1st place, or 2nd if I did poorly. However, I was only refunded my initial buy-in, even though I was nearly guaranteed to place.

With the 100,000+ quads dealt every day, you're never guaranteed to place.

Actually, yes, yes it is how it works. I think it is stupid if they don't pay out via ICM, but if their T&C state that is how they do it, then you have agreed to it when you finish out the form to join. If the T&C said they keep the money and you agreed to them when you joined up, then that would be how it works, too. Like almost everyone, I don't read them but I am held to them as soon as I agree to them.

With that said, Global really should address this issue and have it in alignment with the industry standard.

It isn't about not paying out ICM. They should pay out ICM, but the problem is that they didn't refund the rebuys, addons, and/or re-entries.

can anybody even find where this is addressed in TOS? I looked through "sweeps rules" and "terms of use" on the site and couldn't find anything. It's so loosely written and heavily leaning toward gp that i wouldn't expect it to be anymore than stt/mtt bi refunds, and maybe the Starting stack size of before the hand started in cash games. I did find this lil gem which is quite concerning, cliffs - they can do whatever whenever whyever they want.

5. POTENTIAL SWEEPSTAKES/PRIZE PROMOTION WINNERS ARE SUBJECT TO VERIFICATION BY SPONSOR/PROMOTER WHOSE DECISIONS ARE FINAL AND BINDING IN ALL MATTERS RELATED TO THE SWEEPSTAKES/PRIZE PROMOTION. A PARTICPIANT IS NOT A WINNER OF ANY PRIZE, EVEN IF THE ONLINE SCREEN SHOULD SO INDICATE, UNLESS AND UNTIL PARTICPANT'S ELIGIBILITY AND THE POTENTIAL WINNING PLAY HAS BEEN VERIFIED AND PARTICPANT HAS FULLY COMPLIED WITH THESE RULES AND BEEN NOTIFIED THAT VERIFICATION IS COMPLETE. SPONSOR/PROMOTER WILL NOT ACCEPT SCREEN SHOTS OR OTHER EVIDENCE OF WINNING IN LIEU OF ITS VALIDATION PROCESS.

I would appreciate an answer on the ICM q or if they just refund bi's. If ICM isn't done and screenshots are worthless (according to the above clause) then that will change my volume and game selection, reducing both if site wide disconnects start becoming even a small issue.

The reps have been pretty good here, they should see this and respond. I know in the past they even gave out some free $weeps cash when there was a snafu.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

^ This is the major issue. ICM payouts are much more intelligent if they don't want pissed off customers, but it is a bit less important.

if they're not even refunding rebuys and add ons to players still alive in the games when they shutdown that won't go over well at all. People will be pissed off enough about lack of ICM payouts. I guess its not been an issue yet since this is the 1st time I've heard of it, hopefully disconnections and crashes dont cause it to be.

Yeah, we'll see. It's probably best to give them a chance to respond before getting too upset.

+1

+2

As I said above it's probably an honest mistake, part of the learning curve and this is the 1st time I've heard about this type of a site wide issue. I'd expect it to be rectified and policies put in place for the future for when it happens again as it does everywhere else rarely, some more rare than others. I don't see GP having the same type of ddos extortion problems other sites do for a few reasons so it's nice not to worry about that.

Honest mistake? The rep apparently said in the email that they only refund buy ins. OP, can you post the email response from Global here?

I don't know that I would call it something other than a honest mistake, but I also agree that if what OP put in the original post, that rep likely needs better training or the policies need better clarification. But it still wouldn't be the first time a company rep misrepresented a company position. That kind of thing happens all of the time.

With that said, I would love for an official Global comment to be put out about how they plan to handle situations of unexpected site wide outages.

I think something like split pot to all live hands in cash, and ICM chops for tournaments, including SNGs, would work out really well.

Sure this won't satisfy everyone and every case, but its a start.

If they don't split the prize pool by ICM, what happens to all the buy-ins from players that were already knocked out?