I was on Bovada the other day and saw they had a rare PLO tourney with $100 buyin and $10k guarantee. I went there at start time and saw 5 people only registered and joined them thinking there could be a decent overlay. A few mins later Bovada canceled the touney and we got our buy-in back. I emailed support saying it was a guaranteed tourney and that should mean if im the only one there ready to play I should win the $10k and they directed me to their T&C. They have a paragraph there that says

If a tournament with a guaranteed prize pool is canceled:

1. When players are NOT in the money, the payout will be based on the prize pool composed of buy-ins only.

This means they can get the benefit of advertising a guarantee without the risk of having to pay it out as they can just cancel it. So they can advertise a million-dollar guarantee draw a bunch of players and then if it looks like they won't meet the guarantee just cancel the tourney. I know Bovada has done some shady things but in my book, this is right up there.
Thoughts?

Bro their garuntee means only guarantee if it benefits us. All poker sites are shady as f these days what did u expect

Usually there is a minimum number of players that need to register or gets cancelled. Happens on a regular basis across all sites

Good grief OP how much did you lose in the less shadier deals youve seen and how does it compare to the zero here?

GTFO with your logic and common sense. There is conspiracy afoot here! Bad Actors are committing heinous acts against us!

That T&C is ******ed since it, as you point out, means they can just cancel anything that hasn't hit the GTD and never have to pay overlay

thats why i asked as i wondered if other sites did the same thing.

They pay any overlays. The first million dollar guarantee tournament they had this year had a $67,000 overlay. They had a 20k guaranteed tournament the other night that had a 7k overlay. They have a minimum number of players to start most tournaments. Usually it's something super low like 6 or 9. So if 5 people are signed up by start time the tournament gets cancelled. They have never cancelled a tournament that's already underway to my knowledge. And they've also always paid the guarantee for a tournament thats underway to my knowledge.

This is so stupid on so many levels. The rule you are citing isn't even relevant to the case at hand. That rule is for when a tournament has already started but has to be cancelled for another reason such as the server going down.

You were refunded because the tournament never even happened to begin with. Every tournament has a minimum # of players before it fires. If it doesn't reach that #, everyone gets there money back. Usually online its 8 or 9 for the tourney to start. As long as the tourney starts they will then pay the overlay. Those post start cancellations only happen under extreme circumstances. They won't just cancel it because it looks like they wont make the guarantee as a get out of jail free card.

This is the same even for live tournaments. Here in vegas all the casinos have daily MTTs with various guarantees. Some of the small ones sometimes don't get there required 4 or however many people and they don't end up firing. They aren't just going to pay out the full guarantee to the one guy who registered. This is how its worked in live and online poker since forever.

Sound logic prevails! Usually it is 6 players to start. Not usually 8, but that is other sites. The tourney will say finished in the lobby, and cancelled under information, at start time. This means they didn't get the minimum number of players. If I want to join a tourney, and maybe later than the start time, I watch for the minimum required, see when it is met, then figure my start time. If I need to jump in to meet the required players, I will do so, but not loving it.