More than one, actually, and those of you who either play real money there or are considering it, I strongly suggest you put your money somewhere else.
PR has a history of extremely bad customer service and support. PR rarely if ever takes responsibility for situations that are clearly the fault of PR system or software. Mass disconnects of players, hands getting folded under certain circumstances because of a known glitch and so on. Not to mention server capacity issues which despite making ungodly amounts of money in rake the site refused to address for weeks. Hundreds of players all reporting the same problem and all of them told it’s the fault of their own computer.
Two final straws convinced me to take my money off the site. PR offers a Royal Flush bonus, where if you get a RF at a cash game you get a bonus of 100x the big blind for the table. 25 cent BB = $25 bonus. When the promo was announced the highest limit offered was $50/$100 with a $50 BB. PR added $100/$200 ($100 BB) but never updated the verbiage of the promo. The other day a player hits a RF at the $100/$200 table. $10,000 bonus. PR refuses to pay, despite the player’s being told twice by two different support staffers that he would receive the bonus. Additionally, PR now claims that the bonus is capped at $5,000 and went to the bonus page and updated the bonus language after the fact so it could point to the newly-worded page to support its decision not to pay up. Now support is going through locking down the threads where the situation is being discussed because large numbers of players are pissed off and fomenting mini-revolts and the like. The other final straw involves a player whose hand was folded because of a known software glitch at a critical moment in a tourney. Not only did PR refuse to acknowledge its fault in the matter, the manager of Support with whom the player was working accused him and several other players at the table of cheating! She based her accusation on the fact that there were several hands immediately before the hand in question in which there was no flop. For those who don’t play hold 'em, it is not at all uncommon for there to be a number of hands in a row where no community cards are dealt. One player raises, everyone else folds. So not only did PR fail to admit its error and compensate the player, it falsely accused him of cheating because it has someone in a management position who clearly does not understand the fundamentals of the game. The manager later did admit that the players were not cheating, but still refused to admit that the hand was folded because of PR error and still refused to sompensate the player.
I have lost all trust in the site. Until there are major revisions in the way PokerRoom does business I won’t entrust them with my money. I won’t pay another dime in rake and I won’t let them use my money to invest to make themselves even more money. If a B&M casino pulled this sort of shit the state gaming agency would sanction them possibly out of existence. I’ve talked up this site a lot here because up until now while there have been issues I’ve been able to look past them. This utter lack of integrity isn’t something I’m prepared to overlook.
Thanks for the heads up. When I first started playing online, I checked out a few spots and played, only play money, at pokerroom. I got so sick of the poor connections, getting booted, and slow servers that I decided not to put any real money into their hands. Now I’m glad I didn’t. Thanks for the warning.
But, the question does remain, where will you and your Mac go?
PR has skins, which use the same servers but the rake goes elsewhere. With all the stuff and nonsense people have been messaging me with other spots too. I have an account at Hollywood (PR skin) so fo the time being I’m planning on moving my money there and I’ll look into some alternatives.
I’ve played at Empire Poker (small stakes and a little play money) and found it to be really solid. At least, the gameplay/server part, never had to deal with customer service/tech support, so I can’t say there. I’ve never had a hint of a problem playing there though.
The simple fact is that there is absolutely no recourse for players on these games because they are all offshore accounts. This is why my husband decided not to play. You are totally at the mercy of the company who can, at anytime, take every single penny of every single player, shut the site down and leave.
I haven’t joined you on Thursday night for months, because I can never find your table. I used to suggest playing on PR for real money but obviously I won’t be suggeting that again.
But hey, if you want to come on over to Hollywood I think there’s refer-a-friend stuff there, email me and I’ll give you a referral.
This is true but it’s largely unheard of. The only case of a well-known site having anything like this happen was a site that was affiliated with Dutch Boyd. I don’t know the whole story but a poker site’s going dark is apparently rare enough that this sent shockwaves through the poker community. I don’t play for huge stakes so while I wouldn’t be happy about my cash disappearing if it happened it wouldn’t be enough to really hurt me.
Well, PR ponied up the 5K to the player who won the Royal bonus. He’s satisfied with the outcome, so that’s good, but I still have no confidence in the site to provide the sort of customer service and support I expect from any business, let alone one through which I would channel money.
Thanks for the heads up Otto. I have been practicing the fundamentals at Party Poker in the play money rooms, and was thinking about going in for real dollars, and was looking into different sites. I’ll avoid this one.
Well, I remember being jittery about putting any money in any site for reasons such as this, and I’m still happy saving the money up instead for the B&M casinos and just do play money tournaments online.
It just makes you wonder about a site like PokerStars. They advertise like mad on TV, surely they know that word of mouth on the 'net can reach a lot of people. Ripping people off just seems crazy, keeping a clean game and taking the rake must still be pretty good money.
While welching on a bonus is bogus, it’s not NEARLY as bad as just flat out ripping people off. I sometimes get grand ideas of putting some real money in play…until Friday morning
And my last post was more of an observation on the whole internet poker scene, not saying PokerStars was the same as PokerRoom. I’ve never seen a PokerRoom commercial on TV.
Actually, I play a monthly private tourney at Pokerstars,and I’d like it if Dopers would consider doing the same. Lowest private tourney is $10+$1, which may be a turnoff for some here. But Pokerstars is a good site.
