do you want me to transfer you a refund so you can go away?

Sweet - I don't understand your last post. And I didn't see anything wrong with my previous post and you failed to provide any reason why you thought it was flawed.

I mean, if it was $200 and they said, "No refund because you were able to play 1 hand" then I would certainly leave the site out of principle over a terrible decision in which I felt money was truly stolen from me (different than "robbery"). But there's nothing like that here. There's nothing in this situation that would cause any reasonable person to even consider avoiding all tournaments on the site forever.

i didnt read any of this thread but i know that tourny was whack and they should definately refund the buy ins because people were sat out and couldnt even play, which is absurd. Not to mention the whole client lagged all day and it sucked. Multi entry tournys are for the birds, and they are horrid for the poker economy.

The OP disagrees with you and is of the mindset that they should not refund the buyins...because people were sat out and couldnt even play. I know...it's all pretty confusing.

Your right because I am confused, did people get refunds or not? And if they did, is this thread actually about someone thinking people shouldn't have? If it is, insta-ban for lack of logic.

When you register for a tournament, you purchase a seat, if the site fails to meet there end of the agreement then the only thing to do is what is fair to everyone.
THE TOURNAMENT COULD HAVE EASILY BEEN VOIDED AND RESCHEDULED.
MAJORITY PAID FOR A TOURNEY AND DID NOT GET ONE, A REFUND IS UNACCEPTABLE.
PAYING OUT $200,000 TO PLAYERS THAT COMPETED AGAINST A NON EXISTENT FIELD OF PLAYERS AGAIN IS UNACCEPTABLE.

What could possibly be more fair than giving those unable to play their money back? You purchase a product or service, the merchant is unable to provide it, they give your money back. End of story.

Says you.... based on what knowledge?


Too blatantly wrong for words, shouting doesn't make it true. This is in fact the exact remedy called for in the rules.


Again, shouting doesn't make a ridiculous statement true. Obviously, some people were able to play, thus a field of players did exist. They were not paid out of your money, you get yours back. The level of your thought process in this thread indicates that this is likely a much better result than if you had been able to play...

epic level ITT. obviously its very difficult to just reschedule a tourney for 100k people. Pretty awesome for full tilt to let it play out AND refund the buyins IMO.

I played also that tourney and were blinded out.
First when i registered i was at the table,but then i needed to make restart for my computer and after restart when i tried to open again that tourney,it didn't opened.

I am emotionally devastated. I regged for this tourney to satisfy my gamblin cravings but couldn't play. I went on massive tilt, called a friend and borrowed $500,000 against the deed of my house and went to the casino and blew it alllllll.


I am expecting a refund of $500,054.00 from FTP.


thank you have a nice day.

Meh, if they rescheduled it you'd probably be whining that it was at an inconvenient time, you couldn't play, and demanding a refund!

I have sent 2 emails with no response, I hade 4 entries. I was able to finally get seated around 40 mins in with half chips left, would this be reason for no refund? Obv I would never register for a tourny with half advantage.

Did anyone get a refund yet? Still waitin on even a reply to email i sent.

Typing moronic statements in capital letters doesn't make them any less stupid
alternatively, had he been one of the lucky few who got to play, rest asssured we wouldn't be hearing his lunatic ramblings about what he deems acceptable. (and apparently, paying the tourney payouts AND refunding buy-ins, costing them much more money and headache than his "cancel/reschedule a 100,000 player tourney" solution is NOT acceptable in his twisted world)

buddy u paid for something. you never got what you paid for. They gave u back your money. Problem solved. Whats wrong with you.

No Refund has been received.
No Response to any of my E-mails to Support.

Despite the valiant efforts of bob and Alex, this thread is truly the short bus of the zoo, which is an incredible achievement.

So congratulations to OP, gunth and spin! And clean out your hug machine once in a while, op.

Thanks Mr. Kovacs, but what did I win?

I think the size of the tournament does not really matter here, 2$ or 2000$ buyin, they should handle it the same.

I wish it were a 5000$.... se how they would pay people from their pockets in that case. The tournament would have been canceled in like 5 minutes for sure...

They should have some rules to go by when this kind of things happen, and state that in the ToS of somewhere, like:
- in case of technical difficulties, when more then X% of the players can't take their seat or are dropped out of the tournament, the tournament is canceled and every player gets a refund in the total amount of buyins (rebuys and all fees) regardless of their current tournament position

And the X% should be no more than 10.

And before the people with the IQ of a toothbrush start getting any fancy ideas, I'm only referring to situations like the one mentioned. Not considering the case when people can't make it to the tournament seat because of personal issues (including ISP related stuff, and so on).

No money in poker. Everyone is solid.

In other words - OMG half of y'all are so ******ed. Who dresses and feeds you?

While it's hard to read into this in any other way but "Stars is the best, nobody else is even close," the points Alex makes are pretty strong and valid.

Most concerns from these US legislators seem to include gambling addiction and under age access, two things Stars has addressed pretty well over the years. And judging by some of the issues the regulated, publicly traded sites outside the US have had, it's tough to make a strong case that US regulation will lead to better poker rooms for players (the examples of Italy and France further drive that point home).

However, there are still some contrary arguments to make (from my perspective). Here are two main ones:

1) When somebody cheats on Stars (or any poker site for that matter), the only line seems to be trying to confiscate funds. If it's too late, everybody is out of luck. With regulated US gaming, legal action on people that steal within the US comes into play and possibly those that steal outside of the US (in some countries). This results in more protection for the average player and more realistic options to fight back those that operate maliciously (shady affiliates, players that login and steal from your account, players that cheat at the tables, players that defraud the rooms).

It's good to be able to reach the Isle of Man government with one phone call (though I'm sure Harrah's CEO can reach Harry Reid with one phone call as well), but the government simply does not have the reach nor authority over as many of the players playing on the site as a place like the United States does.

That doesn't mean that every country needs to isolate, however. If the US regulates poker, they can simply band together platforms to allow regulated countries such as France, Italy and the UK to participate as well, and any poker room operating in those countries would have more power to combat fraud.

2) I'm hard pressed to believe that the current PokerStars affiliate policies would remain in effect with a larger amount of competition. This has been addressed by many large affiliates in the affiliate forum here, but essentially, a lack of competition and a lack of options elseware for first rate, large poker sites has allowed Stars to deduct mysterious fees from affiliates without giving a hint or indication of what those fees amount to. Protecting from under the table deals is great, but other sites manage to do that in ways that don't involve not giving an affiliate any indication of what their player signup value really is.

You don't need to give player stats to do this, you can simply tell affiliates "your 25 players raked x amount which resulted in 10k to your room, we deducted 5k in fees after that" and you can see that 25 players are worth 5k to your room and set your promotions accordingly, without being able to pay your players under the table rakeback (because you don't know what each player was worth individually, nor do you know which players had more fees deducted from their rake, you simply know the overall value which is important for promotion setting and clarity of overall value). I suspect with a more clear US outlook, that even under something like the Reid bill, there would be more competition from legitimate businesses like PokerStars and an affiliate setup would not survive with such murky and mysterious details.

The 2nd point is something the average player may not understand nor care about, but for businesses operating and working with PokerStars it is important.

Nevertheless, you make good points Alex, and I agree with most everything that you did say.

Edit: Just to note, I'm not trying to hate on Stars whatsoever here, just making a few counter points to Alex's valid points. Overall I still think Stars is the place I recommend most to players looking for a large playerbase and fair poker room. Further, the points, particularly the 2nd point, are not a reflection of the employees, but the policy in place.

you have some odd ability to see into the future? using terms like "for sure" just ruins your argument so i stopped reading there.

I don't think you can make any inferences about PokerStars from this thread, which is about a situation that happened elsewhere. Certainly nothing I wrote here should be considered an endorsement or criticism of any specific site.

The affiliate angle is an interesting one and something I hadn't considered before. When you think about it, there are lots of businesses that depend on income from the major poker sites, perhaps through revenue share or advertising fees. It will be interesting to see how such businesses are affected by regulation. The trend in France, Italy and Estonia so far seems positive for those running advertisements, but negative for affiliates.