- Stars officials are already at work trying to rectify the fallout.
- Allowing multiple simultaneous players artificially inflated the available chips in play, created opportunities for chip-dumping and all-in jams by multiple players.
- The first-place winner, David Williams, participated individually.
While the recent 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure drew widespread solid reviews and generated a record number of entries and prize payouts, one small sidelight promotion drew a handful of complaints about the event’s organization.
Stars officials are already at work trying to rectify the fallout a poorly constructed, unofficial event designed to promote the site’s new fast-fold product, Zoom Poker. PCA attendees could fork over a $1k+$25 entry fee for a seat against real players in a Zoom pool on Stars’ play-money site.
The promotion’s objective was for entrants to start with 20k in play chips, then see how large a stack they could amass in 12 minutes of play. Players were allowed to enter as many times as they wish.
Problems arose late in the promotion when its administrators unwittingly allowed multiple players to participate at the same time as the promotion neared its conclusion, thus artificially inflating the available chips in play, creating opportunities for chip-dumping and all-in jams by multiple players.
Stars staffers erringly let up to five participants play at once as the promotion neared its close, as described in lengthy posts on multiple forums by Alex “KidWithDream” Treimanis, who also won a small satellite event at the PCA.
Tremainis’ complaints and allegations, first published at pokerfraudalert.com, were confirmed by at least two other PCA participants, Michael “Timex” McDonald and Andrew Chen, both of whom subsequently met with Stars’ exec Lee Jones to discuss the promotion’s flaws.
Despite the fact that players who participated en masse are believed to have won a disproportionate share of the promotion’s prizes, the first-place winner, David Williams, participated individually.
Jones later posted the following on 2+2 in a secondary thread on the topic:
Hi folks – Just so everybody knows: Timex, Andrew Chen and I had a long hallway talk about this situation at the PCA on Monday. I thought it was a productive and intelligent conversation (they’re welcome to give their comments about it).
We are discussing the situation internally and I promised Mike and Andrew that I would get back to them, no matter what we decided.
Regards, Lee
Stars officials have yet to announce their decision regarding the promotion and if partial refunds or credits are to be extended to those adversely impacted in the poorly-administrated event.
