Thousands of players affected by DDoS attack disaster at PokerStars

PokerStars under fire due to massive DDoS disaster

Pokerstars is under fire for their handling of a possible DDos attacks during the busy Sunday Grind period and today.

DDoS Attack PokerStars

Players are up in arms over the unfair cancelation policy, which saw some players collecting more than first prize.

 

Tournament Cancelation happened too late

At around 10 pm CET players from all countries, except Romania, Belgium, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic began to get disconnected from the Pokerstars server due to a huge DDOS attack. That wasn’t enough to stop the action though.

The bosses thought it was fair to allow players from the four remaining countries to steal all the chips. This went on for almost an hour before the tournaments were paused.

Late cancellation led to unfair payouts

Eventually it was decided that the tournaments would be cancelled, with refunds given out according to the current policy. This is where the trouble started.

The policy is a distribution of entry fees according to how many chips a player had. What Pokerstars didn’t comment on, was why they had let the tournaments run on for so long with ongoing issues.

Players from mostly Romania and Belgium were allowed to steal chips for over 40 minutes and this translated into huge payouts. Sometimes more than first place offered before the start!

The situation with the Sunday Million was embarrassing too:

In the $33-Rebuy there were only 32 players left in business, but that didn’t stop Pokerstars scoring a ridiculous own goal. One single Romanian player was able to scoop enough blinds and antes to take home more than 50% more than first place money.

How can Pokerstars justify this resolution as anything close to fair?

DDoS attack not over yet…

This afternoon it sounds as if the attacks are not over. Pokerstars are tweeting that they are experiencing an unusually large volume of disconnections once again.

With all the extra rake that they are charging one would think that they would at least get a better grip on their customer service.

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Professional Poker Journalist
Mark Patrickson is a poker journalist with over ten years of experience. He writes for VIP-Grinders.com, sharing his deep knowledge of poker. He creates interesting content about poker strategy, trends, and news for poker fans worldwide.
Filed Under: Poker Industry News Poker News

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