- PokerStars will award a min-cash to four players that finished out of the money.
- Three additional players that had cashed will receive a $2,360 bonus.
- Stars representative Lee Jones acknowledged they could have been better prepared and apologized.
Participants in the “Zoom Challenge” play-chip promotional tournament held at the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure have received word of adjustments made in payouts, with seven additional players cashing after PokerStars’ review of the events surrounding the tournament.
Details of the adjustments were released by PokerStars official Lee Jones in a post made on at least one major poker forum, announcing that four additional players would be bumped up to the eighth-place, minimum-cash level, receiving $2,360 each, while three other players who already cashed would also receive the $2,360 bonus.
The one-off promotion, charging a $1000+50 entry and allowing repeated buy-ins by players, drew the ire of participants after alleged last-day changes to the promotion’s operational structure allowed several players to participate in a group, against each other, and thereby receive an advantage.
Four of the eight in-the-money finishers as originally determined came from two separate groups of five players that were allowed to play simultaneously, whereas on earlier days, Stars workers reportedly only allowed players to participate individually or in pairs.
Many players sought full or partial refunds of their original entries, even though they finished well down the standings and would have finished out of the money regardless of the play of the two large multi-player groups. Those players will not be compensated.
On behalf of PokerStars, Jones acknowledged the promotion’s flaws, writing, “First, we didn’t plan the promotion as thoroughly as we should have.” Jones also noted that while players on earlier days may have been told they could only play in ones or twos, such a restriction was not actually a part of the promotion’s Terms and Conditions.
The adjustments and additional payouts to be made by PokerStars are an attempt to defuse the situation, but does still raise some questions. The seven additional players to receive bonus payouts include the top four finishers from prior days, who may have been bumped from the money spots by the four players who cashed while playing in groups of five.
Left unaddressed in Stars’ announced solution is that it does not include bumping up players to the slots and payouts occupied by player who participated in groups.
Instead, Stars has chosen to pay a total of $16,520 in payments and describe it as a “goodwill” gesture. A true “bumping up” of individual players would have cost Stars an extra $11,210.
Overall winner David Williams played either alone or with one other player, and his $20,650 cash remains the same. “Group” players finished in spots 2, 3, 5 and 6, and cashed for a combined $27,730.
The snafus surrounding the promotion turned out to be a mild embarrassment for PokerStars, which designed the concept as a simple vehicle to publicize the site’s new “Zoom” (fast-fold) tables.
As Jones noted in his post, “Sometimes in the preparation for a promotion you don’t think of all the angles and we didn’t think of all of them this time. We’re sorry.”
