In-game technical glitch forces PokerStars to abandon $1m tournament

PokerStars has blamed “technical issues” for the cancellation of a headline online tournament with a guaranteed $1m ($730k) prize pool.

The 10^th anniversary of the Sunday Storm was three hours in at around 10pm BST when the tournament froze and no cards were dealt, although the clock kept running and the blinds continued to rise.

The Sunday Storm, which had an $11 buy-in and allowed for up to six re-entries, was heading for a massive overlay when the game crashed.

The Flutter-owned poker brand needed 100,000 entries to hit the $1m guarantee, yet at the time of the glitch there were just 64,617 entries (42,026 entries and 22,591 re-entries).

This meant the tournament was $353,830 short of the $1m guarantee as only $646,170 had been collected.

All other games seemed to be working normally and there was no communication from PokerStars until 10.45pm when the company announced in the in-game chat and on social media that “technical issues” were to blame.

Unfortunately, we have experienced technical issues with the Sunday Storm Anniversary which will result in its cancellation. The tournament will be rolled forward and the guarantee will be paid out.

— PokerStars (@PokerStars) July 18, 2021

Some players took to Twitter after the tables froze to vent their fury and accuse PokerStars, without any evidence, of deliberately halting the Sunday Storm to avoid paying the substantial overlay.

However, the Isle of Man-based firm deserves credit for paying out the full $1m by distributing the money among the remaining 20,555 players.

This involved a “Roll Forward” policy whereby because the participants were not yet in the money – 16,667 places received a prize starting at $19.26 – every player was handed their tournament fee back.

Then, 50% of the prize pool was shared out evenly among all remaining players, while the other half was distributed proportionally according to chip count.

This meant the chip leader, harveyspector1 from Canada, received $208.92 and the prizes awarded gradually declined in value down through the remainder of the field left at the time of the stoppage.

Understandably, those with sizable stacks aired their anger with PokerStars on Twitter as the first prize was a cool $100,000, while second and third would have received almost $70,000 and $50,000 respectively.

The Sunday Storm was meant to be a two-day event as part of the MicroMillions series, with 42 levels played on Sunday and remaining players returning the following day at 7pm BST to play down to a winner.

While the Sunday Storm overlay PokerStars was forced to pay out will be a blow for the operator, it is some way short of its largest financial hit.

Last December, PokerStars was left with $1.2m of overlay – the largest in online poker history – after its The Big Blowout tournament with a $109 buy-in fell well short of the $5m guaranteed prize pool.