IGGY at PokerWorks

Wow, talk about stepping in it and making things worse.

Gotta love the Internet. Everyone gets to take their shots, and for better or worse, the online poker community is a vicious beast.

Apparently, the owner of PokerRoom has responded to allegations of fraud. See my prior uber post for details.

He (if indeed it is him, which I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary, yet) has posted on both RGP and 2+2. I find it hilarious that they have waited since DECEMBER 16TH to address this issue. And if he was looking to smooth things over, well, think again.

Let’s check out the original post on RGP and then we’ll visit some of the responses.

–

Subject: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney

Ladies and gentlemen, please put down your pitchforks and torches for a
moment and hear me out.

Looking back at the response we have had since running the Christmas
Tournament, we felt it was necessary to provide our players with a
resolution and an explanation to the situation we have encountered.

On December 16th, PokerRoom.com held a tournament advertising a flat
screen HDTV valued at $2,000 and other prizes including PokerRoom.com
merchandise. All promotional information given out to players stated
the above information; players were able to view this in the promo
section, through e-mails, and on the registration page.

Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had _planned_
for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately
wanted to “lure” people in with that cash, as some posters have
suggested, shouldn’t we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?

The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused
the information in our game client to change to read that this
tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other
promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the
tournament’s first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.

After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to
correct it by removing the sum that wasn’t supposed to be there. At
the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like
they would have _added_ the same sum if it instead had been missing
from the prize pool.

We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since
reconsidered. **We have paid these players in full as of today January
3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this
from happening in the future.** We would like to sincerely apologize to
our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.

Personally speaking, however, I must say that I’m a little disappointed
to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without
first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems
that some people just want to read the things that support their
already formed picture of “the big, bad corporation ripping off the
little guy”. But things aren’t always that black and white in reality.

Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made
mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have
never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

————-

Let’s see a response here - rebuttal in bold.

—

Subject: Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney

support@PokerRoom.com wrote:

>After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to

EMPHASIS: AFTER

>correct it by removing the sum that wasn’t supposed to be there. At

>the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like

>they would have _added_ the same sum if it instead had been missing

>from the prize pool.

So in other words, after paying out the prizes, you FUCKING STOLE THE MONEY FROM CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS.

>We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since

Yes, being a fucking THIEF is a DOWNSIDE.

>reconsidered. **We have paid these players in full as of today January

>3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this

>from happening in the future.** We would like to sincerely apologize to

>our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.

>Personally speaking, however, I must say that I’m a little disappointed

>to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without

>first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems

>that some people just want to read the things that support their

>already formed picture of “the big, bad corporation ripping off the

>little guy”. But things aren’t always that black and white in reality.

Your site’s ripoff rake from Hell is already bad enough. But now you’re thieves too.

>Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made

>mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have

>never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.

You most certainly did when you stole money out of client accounts after accidentally having an overlay in a tourney. A legit site would have just swallowed it, but that isn’t PokerRoom, which is a thieving ripoff operation.

PATHETIC!

—–

Weeeee.

Let’s do another - I can’t post just one:

—–

> We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since

> reconsidered. **We have paid these players in full as of today January

> 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this

> from happening in the future.** We would like to sincerely apologize to

> our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.

Translation: As a multi-million dollar company we decided to remove a $19k mistake that we made, and hoped no one would notice. Only after the online poker world blew up at us and players left our site in droves did we decide to do anything about it. We hope some of you suckers come back and play with us.

Nice going.

—

Oof - and another:

Nice of you to also go ahead and delete the 117 page thread on Pokah! Since you’re in the mood to accuse the online communities of “jumping on the bandwagon” why not answer the following questions:

1. Why did it take you 18 days to respond to this mess?
2. Your own T&C indicates that tournaments will be paid out according to the information in the lobby of said tournament. Why did staff think it was okay to remove money from players accounts without FIRST informing them?
3. Which staff members have been disciplined for this?
4. Why should anybody trust PokerRoom ever again?
5. When will you make good on the promise your company made regarding all unused Poker Classic tickets? Many of your US customer were left with nothing to show for the patronage of your site.
6. Have all advertised prizes, cash AND merchandise, been awarded to the appropriate people?
7. If you thought nothing was done wrong, why did you issue a $10 + $1 tournament ticket to those who had money removed from their account?
8. If you’re “disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate”, imagine how this community feels to see a large corporation so eager to do nothing.

—–

I’ll watch this thread and report back in case Gary Carson jumps in and bitchslaps them.
Also, if you think this was isolated hate from RGP, think again.

Oskar Hornell went ahead and posted on 2+2. Enjoy the vitriol there:
About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney

Expect another uber soon, damnit.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.