GGPoker Cancels $5Mphonepe app Poker Tournament in Middle of Day 2

GGPoker's rescheduled $5 million guaranteed GGMasters Anniversary event, a $150 buy-in tournament, experienced technical difficulties on Monday for the second time. The tournament restarted briefly over an hour later, and stacks were rolled back to Level 17. But the online poker giant then decided to just pull the plug altogether.

The site crashed with over 20,000 players registered last week in the very same event (hence, the need to reschedule). Over 12,000 players still remained on Day 2 before the second incident occurred. GGPoker sent out a notification on X.

https://twitter.com/GGPoker/status/1896614306017673330

"We have paused Day 2 of GGMasters Anniversary to investigate a table balancing issue. Thanks for your patience, and we will update this thread asap," the poker site's X account wrote.

Poker Tournament's Roller Coaster Day

A number of players who were in the field on Day 2 responded to the tweet. Some claimed they had been playing heads-up due to the unevenly balanced tables, and others made suggestions as to what the poker site should do with the prize pool.

"I started day 2 with 80bb and now have 64.7bb without playing a single hand," @Raw_Nit responded.

"Seems like all stacks at my table were re-organized by stack depth. I have never had a table of players reshuffled like that. I also started day 2 playing HU for 3 or 4 hands before other players eventually showed up. Such a weird start to day 2," @ispLashcrans commented.

Multiple players claimed they'd been forced to play heads-up, and this is not a heads-up tournament. The event had about $100,000 in overlay, leading some to concoct a conspiracy theory that the technical issues were intentional. But the six-figure overlay is merely a drop in the bucket to a company that recently purchased the World Series of Poker (WSOP) for $500 million and has the largest online poker cash game traffic in the world.

Many players called for GGPoker to roll back the stacks to the start of Day 2 and restart the session. GGPoker did decide to roll back the tournament, but not to the start of Day 2 and instead returned the action to Level 17, which angered some players who had busted on Monday before the rolled back level.

Moments later, however, GG's X account shared one final update that essentially put a nail in the coffin on this $5 million guaranteed online poker tournament.

https://twitter.com/GGPoker/status/1896631215702344024

The tournament is officially over, and all players remaining will be refunded. But the backlash directed at GGPoker has already begun, especially from those who were still standing on Day 2. Per GG's refund policy, 50% of the buy-in will be refunded to those still standing, and 50% of the prize pool will be paid "according to the chip count of the remaining players at the time of cancellation."

GGPoker Crashes During $5 Million Guaranteed Poker Tournament; Reschedule Date Set

*Feature image courtesy of X/@iuKeEe66.