O-Poker

I signed up for the $109 NL tourney on Friday night at 9 PM on Party Poker. Since they upgraded the software all tourneys now start with 3,000 chips and a new higher blind structure. When our tourney started everyone had 1,000 chips (all 396 players). I think some of the people didn't even notice. I immediately emailed Party Poker asking them to refund the $109 and remove me from the tourney since this was not the tourney that I signed up for. Below is the intial email that I recieved from them about 45 minutes later:

Dear xxx,

We apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Your issue has already been escalated to the department concerned and we assure you that some decision would be taken keeping all the players in mind. The department concerned have been intimated and they are working on it to resolve it as soon as possible.

As this point of time, I request you to continue playing in the tournament as it is not possible for us to remove you from the tournament. The reason behind telling you to play is that all the players have been given equal amount of chips to start with and you are not at any disadvantage at this point of time.

However, as I mentioned above, we are working on this issue to decide on the best course of action, until then we request you to continue playing in the tournament.

Your understanding, patience and co-operation is appreciated in this matter.

Thank you for choosing us as your online gaming site!

Beena
Poker Customer Care

I particularlly like the part where they say, "The reason behind telling you to play is that all the players have been given equal amount of chips to start with and you are not at any disadvantage at this point of time." No we all started short stacked.

The blinds were at 100/200 before the end of the first hour with a starting stack of 1,000. At the first break there were 106 of the original 394 remaining.

Yeah, no unfair advantage for anyone. This tourney is played no different. It is exactly what we signed up for. What were they thinking?

I managed to finish 31st for a profit just after the 2nd break. For the entire 2nd hour everyone was pretty much all-in or fold.

If I hadn't finished ITM, I would have been relentless about getting my money back for the tourney. I am not sure what happened to the rest of the field that finished out of the money, but I think anything less than fully refunding everyone that finished out of the money is wrong.

Fast Forward to Saturday Night. The same tourney started with 1,000 chips (9PM $109) and they cancelled it after a little less than 1 hour.

It is about 8 PM on Sunday Night and I will check the 9 PM tourney and see if Party is finally able to figure things out after 3 days. I'm guessing probably not.

They had a huge influx of capital after going public, you would think they could beef up the technical department and nip things like this in the bud very quickly.

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$50k Challenge

Things are very crazy at work this week. I don't think I will have a chance today to update all my pokertracker info and $50K Challenge Spreadsheets. If I don't get a chance to update the stats today, I will definitely provide a complete end of the month update on Wednesday/Thursday.

I had my first losing week of the year and was down around $2,500, so I think I stand somewhere around $14k in the challenge - a bad week but still well ahead of pace.

cmitch