WCOOP Main Event cancelled after technical issues
The biggest event in online poker was cancelled not soon after it began last night at PokerStars.
In recent times many poker operators have suffered technical issues or DDoS attacks that forced them to cancel major online events. PokerStars had managed to escape such a fate for their marquee festivals, until now.
Last night major technical issues forced PokerStars to cancel all their tournaments, including the WCOOP Main Events, the biggest and most prestigious tournaments of the online year.
They announced on Twitter that all their tournaments were being cancelled soon after they had started:
We are extremely sorry but we have had to cancel all tournaments currently running, with prizes awarded in accordance with our tournament cancellation policy (this will be done inline with our policy, which you can find here https://t.co/F3ZZKPUZbh). (1/2)
— PokerStars (@PokerStars) September 25, 2022
For anyone struggling to access the link, please see the attached image for our cancellation policy. Thank you for your patience. pic.twitter.com/K5cmorKKm8
— PokerStars (@PokerStars) September 25, 2022
Refunds were made based on collected prize money not guaranteed prize pool. In the case of the six WCOOP events taking place at the time, the players remaining in the event will get their rake back, plus the remaining collected prize pool distributed 50% based on chip count with the other 50% of the prize pool evenly awarded to each player. This meant that most players essentially got a mincash, the biggest prize awarded in the $1,050 Mid Main Event, for example, was $2,280.89. In some instances this meant that players got back less than they bought in for.
Whether this means PokerStars have avoided paying overlays is difficult to assess because these events had a Day 2 late registration and realistically they would have been close to hitting their guarantees. The $109 Low Main Event had a $2.5 million guarantee but collected $1,442,800 at the time of the issues. The $1,050 Medium Main Event had a $4 million guaranteed but had only collected $1,904,000. The $10,300 WCOOP Championship had a $6 million guaranteed but collected $2,970,000.
At the time of writing no further comment has been given by PokerStars, including whether this was a DDoS attack. It seems almost certain that their biggest event of the year will be rescheduled because WCOOP has significant prestige in poker. It also seems inevitable that some sort of added value gesture towards the affected players is likely, as that has been the industry standard when this has happened at other sites.
Were you playing last night? Let us know in the comments:
