PokerStars Cancels Sunday's WCOOP Events; All Affected Players Compensated

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Sep 25, 2022 3 min read Last updated Sep 26, 2022

PokerStars was forced to cancel its highly anticipated slate of Sunday events after technical difficulties on Sunday.

A number of WCOOP events were impacted, including all six NLHE and PLO WCOOP Main Events. Ultimately play had to be halted, and after a break of around 90 minutes tournaments were cancelled.

All affected players have been compensated in accordance with the online poker site's tournament cancellation policy. No statement has been issued as to the cause of the incident on what was one of PokerStars' biggest Sundays of the year.

As It Happened

First signs of an issue started around 18:00 (GMT), with reports of clients crashing and other technical problems. As a precautionary measure, PokerStars paused all tournaments in order to deal with the issue.

Just over an hour later, a further announcement on the PokerStars Twitter account said that they were continuing to work on the issue, and were aiming to resume the tournaments. However, a decision would be made shortly.

Half an hour later, PokerStars announced that they would cancel all currently running tournaments.

Players Affected

At time of cancellation, the $10,300 WCOOP 92-H NLHE World Championship had a field of 297 players, including four PokerStars Ambassadors. Sam Grafton, Ramon Colillas, Alejandro "PapoMC" Lococo and newly-crowned WCOOP champion Sebastian Huber were all affected by the tournament's cancellation.

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There were also a host of big names in the tournament, including Conor Beresford, Francisco Benitez, Steve O'Dwyer, Talal Shakerchi, Benny Glaser, Fedor Holz and Tom Middleton.

What Happens Now?

The cancellation came with an announcement that tournaments would be settled according to the PokerStars "tournament cancellation policy" which features three possible compensation methods:

1. Rollback: In this case, players receive their buy-in and fees back as if the tournament had never happened.
2. Roll Forward: When a tournament has already begun, with players not already in the money, players are refunded their tournament fee (and knockout bounty if appropriate) and the remaining prize pool is divided among the remaining players. 50% of the remaining prize pool is spread evenly, with the other half distributed according to chip counts.
3. Roll Forward (ITM): If a tournament is cancelled where players were already in the money, players are refunded their tournament fee (and knockout bounty if appropriate). Each player then receives the minimum prize not yet awarded at the time of cancellation, with the remaining prize pool distributed according to to chip counts at the time of the cancellation.

Many tournaments that were cancelled on Saturday will be treated according to the 'Roll Forward' policy, including the six WCOOP Main Events.

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