partypoker KO Series Finale Plagued With Connection Problems

partypoker’s KO Series hit a snag when it hit the final stretch. On the last day of the series, there was a whole raft of technical problems that resulted in the cancellation of dozens of tournaments. Players were quick to take to social media to voice their disapproval and vent their frustrations.

The KO series had a schedule of progressive knockout tournaments which had five different levels of buy-ins and over $10 million in guaranteed prize money. The buy-in to these tournaments was split into High, High Roller, Low, Medium, and Micro. The lowest buy-in was at $1.10 in the micro category and the highest buy-in was the $5,200 for the Super High Roller Championship Event.

These were bounty tournaments which meant that all players had a bounty on them. Any player who knocks out another is awarded that bounty – with the winning player increasing in value. This meant that the final day had a lot of high bounty players in the running.

Those players who made it to the final day were looking forward to cashing in and walking away with nice cash prizes. However, the final day was interrupted due to technical problems and players were left frustrated since the technical problems continued to hamper player and create frustrations all around.

partypoker immediately realized that something was wrong and used its official partypoker Twitter account to tweet and acknowledge potential tech problems. The tweet also assured players that the technical team at partypoker was working on resolving them as quickly as possible.

partypoker Forced To Cancel KO Tournaments

However to sort out these technical issues, partypoker had to pause all active tournaments. Players were then notified by a tweet that all tournaments were being canceled and they would either be refunded or have the prize pools distributed according to the status of the tournament. This state of affairs continued for tournaments scheduled for 9 PM to 11 PM.

In a statement, Tom Waters, partypoker Managing Director said

It was a disaster for us as well as the players, the night of our biggest ever PKO tournaments and on the eve of the launch of our new Power Series. I understand that some players may not immediately return to partypoker given their experiences in the last 24 hours and I expect to see some sizeable overlays in the new Power Series MTTs that run from today. We will run the new Power Series as advertised and will not be reducing guarantees.

partypoker has won players overs with its service and commitment during the last 12 months but these technical issues caused a lot of unrest. Many players vented on social media about their concerns and the Official partypoker/bwin Thread on the popular twoplustwo forum received the lion’s share of comments.

This is quite embarrassing to partypoker since they only recently released a video promoting their large poker guarantees and brand new software. partypoker sent out another tweet apologizing and also posting a new schedule for next Sunday’s tournaments.

partypoker apologises for last night’s downtime and adds almost $2,000,000 to next Sunday’s schedule. Click the link for all of the details. https://t.co/JC5S5c6N8M pic.twitter.com/xYUnHOqcy1

— partypoker (@partypoker) March 5, 2018