op is correct. If there is no way to re-register then he should not have been unable to unregister in the first place...and support should be able to see when and how he qualified. If op at least had a general idea of the date when he did this then that might help him.

if ft had phone support or live chat then this whole convo could be finished in a few mins instead of several days.

I really don't understand why you make calculations with 1/3 of truely registered players... for sure the 53$ look better than the real 17$ or so true ticket worth right? Some of those 2/3 might as well cash anyway even siting out.

It would be as if FTP comes and says, hey, your ROI is -20% so you still owe us money even without playing, this would sound as a joke but you still think FTP owes you 53$ lol

All of this is silly, because you can't just take '2/3rds people sitting out' as fact. Even IF there were people sitting out, then that is their choice, right? How on earth can you claim winnings based of people sitting out?

And how would that work in a guaranteed tourney where someone is sick and sits out because he/she is not able to play? Should the price pool be rearranged accordingly? No, of course not.

The basic concept is that this tournament was actually worth a lot more to the players who showed up than appears so on paper on account of approx 2/3 of the registrants not showing up to play (which is standard for these) and literally being dead money not competing for the prizepool. I was expecting this and this made me even more excited to play in it. This would be very easy for Full Tilt to confirm by looking at hand histories for about 20 minutes to see how many players were Sitting Out (after they were autofolded during Hand 1) and never played a hand. These players that don't show and don't play a hand never cash in these tournaments and aren't competing for the prizepool. This is especially true in the case of this particular tourney in question which was a winner-take-all for a 2011 WSOP Main Event seat.

the problem with this is that the all in hands of a sitting out player are run down IIRC (maybe this is stars i am not sure now that i think about it) so in theory these people could win the tournament when the blinds = their own and their opponent's entire stack.

The problem with this is that I already took that into account which is why I am only asking for $50 instead of $53. Yes, one Sitting Out player could win over a million 40-60 underdog microstack all-ins and win the tournament. Keep in mind, once a Sitting Out baby stack player is forced to go all-in and wins that and doubles up he can't double up that current stack. He is dwindled down once again to a microstack and then must win again. Also keep in mind the Sitting Out player is usually in a scenario where he is usually about a 40-60 dog because he has a random hand going up against either one pre-f raiser w/ a good hand or several players w/ pretty good hands. So the odds are astronomically long, for all intents and purposes impossible.

mno - That bizarre hypothetical doesn't really change very much. The value fo the tournament is clearly somewhere around the $50 range assuming OP's estimates of the number of people sitting out are correct.

The other point about the sitting-out players being able to cash would pply if a normal prize structure but doesn't really apply here as it is too unrealistic. The tournament was just giving a package to the first place finisher (or maybe it was top 2...not sure). I don't think anyone else got any prizes.

It would have to be higher than 1 in a trillion for such a player to win a seat I would think.

The player would have to win every all-in...and then would auto-fold his blind every time he wasn't automatically all-in and dwindle down again....he would have to be able to survive all the way to heads-up and THEN keep on winning each time he was all-in again until the blinds got to be so gigantic that the lone remaining opponent was finally put all-in himself.

It would be a bit more likely to perhaps happen if there were 2 or 3 qualifiers since at least there are other players involved who can knock each other out but I suspect would still be higher than 1 in a trillion even in that scenario.

no idea why one can unregister if one cannot register again/it's a one time only shot. it's an issue caused by either bad planning or bad responses by ftp and it should be on them to fix it somehow. I do think that a credit towards a future similar event is probably decent compensation if they can work that out with the OP.

"Hello xxxxxxxx,

Thank you for contacting Full Tilt Poker Support.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer compensation at this time.

As stated previously, all players were able to register for this tournament at
the same time. You were registered and later you unregistered from this
tournament.

Please note that Full Tilt Poker does not offer compensation for missed
tournaments.

If there's anything else we can help you with, please let us know. We're always
here to help.

Regards,

xxxxxxx
Full Tilt Poker Support"

Clearly no mention of how I was unable to re-register in the tournament lobby or how the first support guy negligently missed that I qualified for the tournament and mistakenly told me I didn't qualify, when, if he was acting competently, he could have easily re-registered me for the tournament in time to play it.

dear ftp-

that seems like a horrible canned response.

regards,

-apefish




but hey I'll be fair to ftp- there's a reasonable chance no one person in their support understands the complete story.

magurkin - You were really unclear in your OP and FT's respnse also indicated that they didn't understand at first that you had registered and unregistered for it.

You put off informing us that you had actually BEEN registered for it and then unregistered from the event so I'm guessing you kind of didn't get around to that part at first with them either.

Make sure they know that after you unregistered you assumed that you would be allowed to register again but you were unable to do so.

I don't think $$ compensation is appropriate in your case. I do think that that a future tourney entry MIGHT be. But this only assumes that you tried to register again before the registration cut-off. I do think it should be on FT if they really do allow you to unregister from a tourney that you can't re-register for.

However, it's also possible that FT tosses a pop-up window there explaining "once you unregister you are not allowed to register again and you lose the tournament entry" or something like that...and if you have tableninja on it might have automatically clicked ok on that pop-up before you even read it.

I still think that even in that case FT should probably just give you an entry to a future similar event. But I don't think they would be obligated to as it would be even more your fault how this happened.

ape - There is a VERY good chance nobody in FT understands the story because OP has been pretty bad at telling it to us so far. Again though, this is the type of thing that could be figured out really quickly by both parties with live phone or chat support instead of bouncing misunderstood e-mails back and forth every few hours/days.

Also OP - a possible $53 tournament entry is not "huge +EV" and you look kind of silly calling it that.

Disagree. If the ticket Op received is good for that freeroll only (don't know if this is true), then OP should still be allowed to unregister in case he can't make the tourney. Keep the dead stacks to a minimum, as they only mess things up anyway.

Like I said before, the only reason in my OP that I didn't mention being automatically registered and then un-registering and then being unable to re-register is b/c at that time Full Tilt was not giving that as the reason they could not compensate me. They were saying I never even qualified for the tournament in the first place and should not be registered for it. Eventually it became evident to them that they were wrong, but by then it was too late as the tournament had already passed. Nowhere did it warn that if I un-register I will be unable to re-register (but obviously a competent support staff could have easily re-registered me for the tournament).

So lets see if I have this figured out:

1) OP wins the permission to play in a private freeroll.
2) OP un-registered from the private freeroll
3) OP tried to re-register for the private freeroll, but the system wouldn't let him
4) OP misinterprets the "permission to enter a private freeroll" as a "tournament ticket." Complains that FTP stoled money from him.

As I see it, the problem is in step #4. OP didnt get a tournament ticket, he got the right to enter in to a restricted freeroll. The difference is that a tournament ticket has value, the right to enter the restricted freeroll does not.

FTP may have made a mistake somewhere by not realizing that OP was qualified in the first place, and the software may be a bit funky in that it wont allow you to un-reg and then re-reg for a restricted freeroll. In both cases, OP is entitled to a refund in the ammount of the full value of what he recieved, which is $0.00.

only agree with that if it's made absolutely clear to someone unregistering that there is no way they can re-register. since there are still pieces that come out here and there in stories like this I won't assume either way on that at this point.

one issue here is how it's perceived. ftp can go about acting like it doesn't matter at all, or if they take a look at the whole picture and they decide there are things they could have done better they can figure out some fix that anyone reading this thread looks at and says "hey they seem like a reasonable company in how this was resolved."

No question there's something wrong with the software. Either the players shouldn't be allowed to unregister, or they should be warned that there's no coming back. Or, optimally, they should be able to re-register freely.

Regarding number 4, there was no misinterpretation as "Tournament Ticket" was listed as the buy-in in the tournament lobby. It said "Freeroll/Tournament Ticket" so that's the only reason I un-registered, to receive a tournament ticket or to see what I would get and I ended up receiving no ticket or anything so I went to re-register and could not. There was no notice anywhere that if I un-registered I would not be able to re-register. Keep in mind, this was all the day before the tournament was scheduled to start.

This.

I was dorking around on the VIP tournament page on Stars and registered for a 1500 FPP Satellite to the Million Dollar Freeroll after it had already begun. I thought it was a regular freeroll and just didn't see that it was a satellite until after I registered. The satellite was completely meaningless to me because Supernovas automatically get entry to the target tournament anyway.

So I wrote to Stars and explained my error and they immediately refunded me the cost of the tournament. It was 100% my fault for registering for the thing. I completely would have understood if the site had said, "sorry we can't refund you...please be more careful next time." But knowing this was Stars handling the situation I was pretty sure they were going to be generous about my mistake and do something nice for their customer.

On top of that...the whole thing was taken care of in about 10 minutes since their e-mail support is generally pretty fast.

OP in this situation made an understandable mistake I think and FT would be wise to help him out. It's not mandatory. But there's really no reason for them not to.

So you knew (or should have known) that Full Tilt has only email support...
and you knew (or should have known) that said support sucks...
and you knew (or should have known) that their software is and always has been weird...
and it was only one day before the tournament...
and you STILL had to go dicking around for no good reason.

I'm taking back the cookie.jpg. You get nothing.

Trying to reduce major bankroll variance=dicking around? Like I said, they listed Tournament Ticket under the buy-in for the tournament in the lobby which is super misleading b/c obviously I found out that when you un-register for the tournament you do not receive a Tournament Ticket.

What were you planning to do with the freeroll ticket (which would only work for the said tournament) if you had got one?

Upon receiving the ticket I would have realized it was only good for that tournament, could not be used for a similar buy-in but lower variance tournament (that isn't winner-take-all), and would have used the ticket to re-register for the bloody event!

OP won the right not to get sucked out on with ~40 people left. Which is what I did. Also won the right not get to sucked out on at the final table, which had the potential for some really, really tough beats with this format. Be glad.