http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/PokerroomConmen-54380

I know this is old, but it still hasn’t been fixed. If anyone here is still playing at PokerRoom or has funds there, I’m requesting that you withdraw them and cease playing. Things like this are unhealthy for online poker and they hurt all of us who benefit from the game.

In addition, please write to support@pokerroom.com to express your displeasure stating that you will never play at the site until: the situation is fixed and a public apology is issued on their site and major forums — and also that you will withdraw all funds immediately. As an incentive, I am offering the following deal:

Make sure you get both email addresses correct and make sure it’s from your thepokerdb-registered email address — if you mess up any of those requirements, I won’t be able to give you credit. It will be an administrative hassle to deal with any email that doesn’t meet these requirements, so I am not going to be lenient with any of them. But if you follow them, I’ll do my best to get you upgraded within 24 hours of you sending the email.

NOTE: The above deal (in italics) is now off the table (any email sent after 1/3/2006 as of 4:15 PM EST). 30+ people completed it while it was on the table. See below for updates. Feel free to keep emailing PokerRoom though.

Thanks and please post a comment when you send an email. It will help to show support for the players’ cause here.

UPDATE (Wed Jan 3rd at 1:30 PM EST):

It appears at least some, or possibly all, of the money has been restored: http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/PokerroomConmen-54380/p/672068#672068

I have received 21 emails thus far. Hopefully we’re helping to resolve this. I still want to see a public apology and/or something that would benefit the players. Just paying out what they were supposed to payout in the first place really isn’t good enough.

UPDATE #2 (Wed Jan 3rd at 1:40 PM EST):

Their statement:

Ladies and gentlemen, please put down your pitchforks and torches for a moment and hear me out.

Looking back at the response we have had since running the Christmas Tournament, we felt it was necessary to provide our players with a resolution and an explanation to the situation we have encountered.

On December 16th, PokerRoom.com held a tournament advertising a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000 and other prizes including PokerRoom.com merchandise. All promotional information given out to players stated the above information; players were able to view this in the promo section, through e-mails, and on the registration page.

Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had planned for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately wanted to “lure” people in with that cash, as some posters have suggested, shouldn’t we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?

The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused the information in our game client to change to read that this tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the tournament’s first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.

After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to correct it by removing the sum that wasn’t supposed to be there. At the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like they would have added the same sum if it instead had been missing from the prize pool.

We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since reconsidered. We have paid these players in full as of today January 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this from happening in the future. We would like to sincerely apologize to our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.

Personally speaking, however, I must say that I’m a little disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems that some people just want to read the things that support their already formed picture of “the big, bad corporation ripping off the little guy”. But things aren’t always that black and white in reality.

Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

I think it’s pretty poor. No one is jumping on a bandwagon here — the whole thing was ridiculous and I can’t believe they still don’t see that.

UPDATE #3 (Wed Jan 3rd at 4:15 PM EST):

I’m taking down the offer because the people did at least get their money. Also, I’m leaving for the PCA tomorrow and doing all of this upgrading will be a lot of work. 30+ people sent in emails and received a free month to thepokerdb. Thanks for your support of fairness and honesty in online poker.

Related posts:

1. Start of thepokerdb
2. admin@thepokerdb.com: a fun place to be
3. Background of thepokerdb.com
4. thepokerdb v3.0: HH paster, tabs, filters and player linking!
5. I get some goofy support emails at thepokerdb