[Please see below for an update to this story]
The GGMasters is one of the biggest weekly online tournaments at GGPoker, promising at least $500K in prize money every week for a buy-in of $150.
For the tourney’s 5th anniversary edition on February 23 the site bumped up the guarantee by a factor of 10, with a minimum of $5,000,000 to be won, all for the same $150 buy-in. All that extra value proved to be popular with players, but all those players may have been too much for the GGPoker servers to handle.
Partway through the tournament GGPoker crashed, booting everyone from the online tables and throwing the event into chaos. Irate players quickly took to social media to complain, and when news was announced that the GGMasters Anniversary would be paused until March 2, the complaints did not stop.
GGPoker misses a Sunday
‘Never miss a Sunday’ is a popular saying among online poker grinders, with many people's 'day of rest' being traditionally the biggest day of the week for tournaments with big guaranteed prize pools. GGPoker is likely feeling the sting after losing service yesterday – it wasn’t just the GGMasters Anniversary tournament that went down, but the site as a whole. The reason behind the outage remains unclear.
Popular streamer - and GGPoker ambassador - Kevin Martin was sharing his Sunday grind with viewers when the moment came.
Kevin Martin was streaming when the outage hit.Martin shared an update from the operator, with the news that any tournaments that were in play had been cancelled and buy-ins refunded, with the exception of the GGMaster Anniversary, which has been moved to March 2.
The official GGPoker response on X used the words ‘paused’ and ‘resume’, which would indicate the tourney will pick up where it left off, while Martin’s use of the word ‘moved’ would seem to imply that it would be a full re-start rather than a resumption. We would assume the former is a far more likely scenario; a full restart would have complications, particularly given the fact many players had already bust, while others had run up big stacks.
However, what this means for players who are unable to play next Sunday, March 2, is unclear.
Update - Feb. 24, 11am ET:
GGPoker has confirmed that stacks and blinds in the GGMasters Anniversary tournament will be rolled back to the point at which 'it became unfair for all players', which was 7:10pm UTC on February 23.
The tournament will resume at 5pm UTC on March 2, and all players who had registered prior to the outage and still had chips in play will be refunded their $12 tournament fee. Eliminated players will receive no compensation, and those who registered after the start of the outage will not receive a refund of their tournament fee. Tickets issued to take part in the event will be extended or re-issued.
Players unable to participate on March 2 will not be refunded, per the site's published policy.
Further details can be found at GGPoker.
