pokerstars

[HERBIEHACKIT]

JOKER  sorry I mean pokerstars have, after 5 years lost me as a customer. the reason, well it goes like this, last tues I multi tabled on 8 9 seater sngs (light play for me) at $3.50 a game. during play I got a stars message re wcoop as soon as i got this message stars connection disconnected. this happened a further 6 times. I some how cashed in 2 of the 8 but lost money over all. however as i am up this year and have done very well on stars over the 5 years I was happy to right this off and put it down to a bad day. the following day I entered 8 more games and same again, i got the message and crashed. I had a further 9 disconnections, including holding pair of aces, kings three times and jacks as well as a,k and a,q, these where all pre and i timed out on them all. I was well pissed off and got in touch with stars. their response was a classic. it was along these lines, we do take premium hands into consideration but we can see you were disconnected for long periods of play and we therefore will refund you $3.50 for the game. yes thats right they refunded one game and ignored the other 7 I was playing at the same time and all of the previous day. so i got back in touch with them pointing out i was multi tabling at the time. they refused to move so I took my complaint up to their supervisor. his response was that having looked at the games I was not effected by the disconnection problem and stars were not prepared to take any further action. not only did the super contradict the first response but basically seemed to be able to determine the outcome of hands. My concerns are how can anyone say that in a 9 seater game disconnections do not affect your chances and secondly if they can predetermine hands then do they know what is going to hit before it comes. If the latter is the case then I must concluded their game is rigged for action. now given that I asked then to refund the games I had played and not cashed ($38.50) over the 16 games and they offered me $3.50 I told them to close my account and cash me out. I also told them to remove me from their mailing list and I would treat any mail from them as harassment and would take reasonable action it they contacted me again. they were not bothered and basically said I would be back.

[fandango]

Just curious.. Is this just an isolated case only happening to yourself, or did it happen to everyone playing?.. Just saying as I"m sure Pokerstars would have recieved thousands upon thousands of reports of the same thing happening to other players across the site, and addressed the software accordingly.

Is it down to your pc security pop up settings or something?? also I"m interested in why you didn"t use the option to block news feeds etc in the filters if it kept happening.

You say you have been playing PS for five years, and now your concluding that it is " rigged for action" ??..

I"m sure the millions of other account holders would immediately shut down their accounts rendering PS insolvent, if they where proved of " rigging" their games, so I just don"t see the logic in this  

I"m not flaming your post just trying to put into perspective a couple of my own thoughts, there are plenty of other poker sites waiting to have your custom so your spoilt for choice.

[AAroddersAA]

Good post Carl, one thing though. None of those other sites are as good as Pokerstars.

I believe I am correct in saying that Pokerstars has less disconnect problems than other sites, although I can"t remember where I read that and if it was likely to be accurate. Having played on most sites though I believe it to be true. They are also the best available for customer service, have you tried ringing them?

To be fair I don"t think the OP was saying it is rigged but that they should have done more to compensate him for the loss. I am not 100% sure I agree as it would depend what his equity was in the tournament at the time but that is not the point. Maybe if you asked Stars for compensation in T$ or something like that they would be prepared to do something. Were you reconnected and did you complete the tournaments after only missing a few hands? If so then I would agree with their response to be honest.

Closing an account for this one off incident seems extreme. I would go back to Stars and see what else you can get from them, tournament tickets, T$ etc.

[HERBIEHACKIT]

on the 2nd  i was short stack in one leading in 2 and well placed in the others. that is before disconnections. on the premium hands i held aces pre i would have called as another player hand shoved same in 2 others with kings in both, shoves had been made before it was my turn to act. the disconnections were so bad, i felt forced to shove with marginal hands as i was just waiting for more disconnections. as for phoning stars, whats their number?

[AlanG]

I would be with the other replies in encouraging you to take your time before you fall out with them completely.  That is the opposite of my experience of Stars, and I really think you won"t find a better place to play.

I think you were unlucky twice - firstly in the timing of the disconnections, and secondly in the support individuals that you dealt with.  I have found Stars support to be unbelievably good - not just the best I have found in poker sites, but the best I have found in any company.  I have had them refund me the buy-in for a Sunday Million that I forgot to unregister from, just because they could see I was a regular customer, and every issue I have put to them has been resolved well within an hour or two.

If you aren"t particularly keen on big MTT"s then there are plenty of decent alternatives, and it is much easier to win on other sites - basically the percentage of pro players is much higher there than elsewhere.  If you do like large field tournaments and wide choice of games at any time there is nowhere else that comes close.

Presumably they do not believe your suggestions that the disconnections were caused by their software, and I imagine if it really was there would be an avalanche of complaint about this on the forums, so I suspect you were just particularly unlucky.  As others suggested you might get more from them if you go back (after you have cooled down!) and show them, with hand histories, how you can justify more than $3.50 compensation.

[HERBIEHACKIT]

too late i am gone, if I have dealt with a bad member of staff then so be it, they can stick their site where the son dont shine. will be putting £500 into party poker, use to play there and done ok, traffic is good. as for mtts I tend not to play them on line. i play 9 to 18 seater sngs, they have been very good to me on a number of sites but more so on stars but only because stars has the volume of traffic i need when multi tabling. even live i tend to play more cash these days as the tournies in newcastle are pretty poor. that was not always the case, i remenber 3 years ago playing a £20 freeze out and taking it down for £1,250. happy days.

[AMRN]

Cutting off nose to spite face perhaps?

[daveyb147]

action hands ,miracle card site imo !!!

[AAroddersAA]

too late i am gone, if I have dealt with a bad member of staff then so be it, they can stick their site where the son dont shine. will be putting £500 into party poker, use to play there and done ok, traffic is good. as for mtts I tend not to play them on line. i play 9 to 18 seater sngs, they have been very good to me on a number of sites but more so on stars but only because stars has the volume of traffic i need when multi tabling. even live i tend to play more cash these days as the tournies in newcastle are pretty poor. that was not always the case, i remenber 3 years ago playing a £20 freeze out and taking it down for £1,250. happy days.

Fair enough, you are right btw, Stars does not have a number. I am sure I remembered ringing them once but maybe it was Full Tilt. Party are a good site though with decent traffic.

Cash games are likely to be softer on Party as well I would think. Don"t know about tournaments though. Stars attract a lot of fish by sponsoring lots of stuff.

[Paulie_D]

Cutting off nose to spite face perhaps?

I thought so.

[deanp27]

I"m sure that stars will deal adequately with any complaints as they usually do. If I have Any issues it"s probably good to take this up with the poker site than post a huge body of text on a poker forum. Just saying...

[APAThetic]

traffic is good

Party are a good site though with decent traffic.

What games are you guys talking about? I play 25NL or 50NL 9-handed and there is rarely more than around 10 tables going on Party. There are 5 games in action at the moment (yes, I know it"s late), but 50+ on Stars. Granted there are quite a few more 6-max tables (but I don"t play them often). It seems as if the sites with less volume have many more 6-max tables these days. Am I behind the times, and 6-max is the way to go? (opinions welcome).

Herbie, I would give Stars another go if I was you, unless you"re happy to play on another site. After all, you"ve played there so long without problems (that I know of), that it would be a shame to let this one incident make you move sites. Personally, I find ALL other site"s software (that I"ve played on) so inferior to Stars, that I hate multi-tabling anywhere else.

If all else fails, there"s always the new Full Tilt.

BTW, can someone explain how PokerStars benefits by paying so much to buy Full Tilt? When they relaunch, won"t it just divide their player pool?

[Paulie_D]

BTW, can someone explain how PokerStars benefits by paying so much to buy Full Tilt? When they relaunch, won"t it just divide their player pool?

It has nothing to do with player pools and EVERYTHING to do with keeping in good with the DOJ.

Money well spent to get back into the US market.

[Jon MW]

Also - if somebody else buys Full Tilt then Pokerstars has a serious rival, by buying it themselves they keep control of the market.