Server problems plague the large guaranteed main events during the Merge Poker Network's "Online Poker Series" tournaments.

Server Issues Hit Merge Poker Network Tournament Series

Sometimes it is the unfortunate displeasure of Professional Rakeback to bring you negative news regarding one of our partner poker networks. Sadly this is one of those times, for today, the flagship tournament series hosted on the Merge Gaming Network collided head on with some serious server issues that adversely affected players.

The Tournaments

The network already has one of the more impressive tournament schedules in not only the US online poker market, but in the world, sporting $7,000,000 worth of guaranteed poker tournaments each month. However, once each quarter all of the skins on the Merge Gaming Network get together and put on one of the largest tournament series available for US poker players, often exceeding an extra two million dollars in guarantees in the prize pool. This quarterly poker series, formerly called the "Poker Maximus," is now simply dubbed, "The Online Poker Series" or "OPS" for short.

Everything was going great with this iteration of the Online Poker Series. There were very few overlays, a few tournaments exceeded their guarantees by a fair margin, the press was good and everything was shaping up to be another successful run. So its Sunday night, November 24th, 2014, the main events (a $530 buy in 75k GTD and a $215 buy in $250,000 GTD) are in full swing, then what was the problem?

The Crash

The problem was that Merge turned into a pumpkin at midnight! Shortly after midnight players began contacting Professional Rakeback via Skype support asking what was wrong with Merge. The public forums immediately began filling up with complaints of being kicked out of games. The timing on this was quite poor the two largest multi-table tournament events of the OPS were deep in the money, as were several other 5 figure guaranteed tournaments. The $215 buy-in $250,000 guaranteed main event was at the final two tables while the $530 buy-in $75,000 GTD was at the final table!

As if this was not bad enough, strange reports began to surface in the forums, on twitter, and directly from our clients. These disturbing reports were from players claiming to have logged back into the gaming servers, but on other people's accounts! Sure enough, one of our clients quickly provided us with a screenshot of another player's account, screen name, and balance as he attempted to buy into a cash game!

The Panic

Naturally a full scale panic began on the forums and Twitter as this information hit the digital streets. Players were frantically attempting to log back in, not only to resume their positions in ongoing tournaments, but to check the status of and take control of their accounts before someone else did!

Initially someone on the 2+2 forums reported being shorted money in her account upon re-logging, though she later recanted. It appears that at least two players actually played on other people's accounts before realizing what had happened upon their subsequent re-login. Though for one of them it was actually a good thing as he came back with more chips than he had when initially disconnected.

The Resolution?

Professional Rakeback was able to confirm that for approximately 5 minutes, there was some sort of server glitch whereby some players logged back in only to be seated at the tables of other players. What was scary about this was that these affected players, for a brief time, could have potentially played hands on another persons account, unaware of the server glitch. It appears that at least two dozen accounts were affected, possibly more.

Given that this situation existed only for a very short time, we think the potential financial damage was limited. The possible damage to Merge's reputation however could be more sesvere should they fail to respond to players concerns about the matter. As soon as we at Professional Rakeback realized something was askew we immediately reached out to Merge Gaming and Carbon Poker management for help. Carbon immediately responded and was on the case working hand in hand with Merge to restore functionality and address the issues. Given the past responses by Carbon Poker to adverse situations, we think they will do whatever is necessary to review all play records in the affected time period and compensate players / reverse any damages done.

The players at the final table of the $530 evidently will need assistance. It was reported that when the server went down, eight players were left competing for the $19,000 top prize. When one player was able to log back in, there were only three people left, two playing, and one being blinded out! Initial consultation with with tier one support personnel pointed the aggrieved player to the Merge Gaming Tournament Cancellation and Refund policy. As of yet, there is no mention of the outage on Merge Gaming Twitter account "@MergeGaming"

Professional Rakeback expects that players will be compensated somehow for this server error, as was done a few months ago when the $25,000 freeroll frenzy tournament was subjected to a server glitch. The affected players were all monetarily compensated, as well as the tournament rescheduled for those participants who were still engaged. PROFRB news will certainly keep abreast of this situation and notify our clients and readers of any and all updates to this ongoing situation.

UPDATE: 11/24/14 - Professional Rakeback has received word that, as we surmised above, only a handful of players were affected. The error that produced this fault was found and corrected. We are told that this can not happen again after the fix.

UPDATE: 11/25/14 - Players have begun reporting special case compensation from our partner site Carbon Poker. Players there who were at the final table have begun reporting thousands of dollars in direct cash compensation for "lost equity" as well as additional tournament tickets. This is exactly how we were hoping it would be handled and once again proves the integrity of Carbon Poker.

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