I signed on to Full Tilt last night to check out the action in the Battle of the Bloggers Freeroll and…well…I’m an addict, so I decided to play some myself, since I didn’t qualify for the A-List Tourney.
And I ruined it for everybody.
I bought into the $28K MTT and something amazing happened. It was Level 2 (15/30) and I got AA in the big blind. UTG limped, UTG+1 limped, there was a 3x raise to 90 from MP, a call from the button and a call from the small blind. With 360 already in the pot, and knowing that old adage–”Aces win small pots and lose big pots”–I bumped it to 300, hoping to get it heads-up. The limpers folded, but the initial raiser insta-called, as did the button and SB. Lovely.
The flop came Ts8c6s and when the SB checked, I just shoved. My remaining stack was exactly equal to the pot, and while that appears a pretty benign board, I also thought at least one of my opponents had a medium pair and those cards are a minefield of potential sets. But really, what else am I gonna do?
The initial raiser–again–insta-called, but I really wasn’t concerned with him. I figured him for JJ. The others folded, which was pleasing. My lone remaining opponent turned over 77 for 6 outs. I dodged them and won a huge pot, vaulting me to among the early chip leaders.
Having aces hold up there, considering the action and the way I’ve been running, was unusual. The Full Tilt servers thought so, too, and almost immediately broke, which resulted in all in-progress tourneys being voided, including the BBT and $28K.
I’m only guessing here, but FT HQ probably saw error messages like…
File Not Found
Fatal Exception
Damaged File
…all of which are reasonable reactions to me dragging a big pot. It was certainly an exception and it proved fatal.
Sorry ’bout that, everybody.
Adendum: The gang at Full Tilt appears to have not only refunded my buy-in (as expected), but threw a little on top, as well. Not sure what formula went in to awarding the extra cash (doesn’t seem to correspond with where I “finished” in the tourney) and I can’t find an announcement anywhere, but, as usual, FT shows itself to be client oriented.
I expect the 1st prize money in the BBT freeroll to be transfered from your account to mine by four o’clock tonight.
“Not sure what formula went in to awarding the extra cash (doesn’t seem to correspond with where I “finished†in the tourney) and I can’t find an announcement anywhere, but, as usual, FT shows itself to be client oriented.”
If a FT tourney is voided before the money is reached, each player remaining in the field is refunded his tournament buy-in and tournament fee. The remaining prize pool (i.e. the dead money from the bustouts) is then divvied up by chip count.
How do I know this? Because it happened to me tonight. I was 10 spots off the money in *two* separate tournaments that were voided when the servers crashed for the second straight night. Apparently me doing well in a tournament also causes stack overflows and fatal exceptions.
eek. Thanks for the info, J.