An unusual glitch causes a very tricky problem for the online MILLIONS, partypoker's biggest ever MTT.

On Day 1A on Sunday the tournament didn't stop after the scheduled end time and had to be paused manually after an extra 45 minutes. This left partypoker in a quandary about how to proceed because with a Day 1B and turbo Day 1C scheduled, they had a choice of either winding back Day 1A to the original end point, making Day 1B and 1C longer than planned, or cancelling their biggest ever tournament.

This is obviously as rare an issue as you will see in an online tournament because having multiple start days almost never happens. Had it been a singular start day tournament almost everyone would agree that carrying on as played would be the way to go, but because Day 1B & 1C players would have to adapt to a structure that wasn't advertised, it is not as easy a decision.

Eventually it was decided to 'rewind' the tournament back to its original end point, meaning anyone who had been eliminated during the extra period was now back in the tournament, but anyone who had amassed a bigger stack in that time would see theirs revert back to where it was when it should have ended.

In addition partypoker sponsored Pro Patrick 'pleno1' Leonard confirmed that the affected players have been compensated for their troubles. One player on Twitter confirmed they received $324 and Leonard said around $25,000 has been paid out in total:

Thats not necessarily true. What happened

1- Tournament should have finished after 30 mins

2- Level played for longer

3- In that time, some people busted, some people got more chips

4- We reinstated all stacks from when play "should" have finished

5- We added an extra 25k comp — Patrick Leonard (@plenopads) December 4, 2017

The partypoker online MILLIONS $5,300 Main Event continues today with Day 1C followed immediately by a Day 1D turbo. Day 2 takes place tomorrow and the final table, where one player is guaranteed $1 million, takes place on Thursday.