The world of internet poker is never lacking for controversy. The latest involves arguably the most respected online poker room in the industry, PokerStars.
Recently, the site held its annual World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) $215 Heads-Up Pot-Limit Omaha “second chance” tournament. When the tournament was down to 16 players, “Anti-Matter”, along with his opponent, “arbianight”, agreed to sit out for a while so that they could both watch a big boxing match on television. According to Anti-Matter, after about 20 minutes, he was declared the loser and arbianight advanced to the quarterfinals.
Upon chatting with PokerStars support, Anti-Matter, arbianight, and any railbirds in attendance found out that if two opponents in a heads-up multi-table tournament sit out for 250 consecutive hands, it would be automatically declared completed. In this case, since both players were sitting out and one player had to move on in the tournament, arbianight got lucky because he had slightly more chips than Anti-Matter as a result of the order in which their blinds had been passed back and forth. Despite both Anti-Matter´s and arbianight´s pleas, PokerStars would not allow them to play on. Anti-Matter requested he at least be paid what he calculated to be his equity in the tournament, but at that point, PokerStars was unable to do anything besides give him his payout for making the round of 16.
As frequently happens when an online poker player feels slighted by a poker room, Anti-Matter took his case to the community at the TwoPlusTwo forums. And, as frequently happens next, a mess ensued, with opinions flying from all angles. Here are my thoughts on what each party did wrong in this situation:
Anti-Matter
He sat out during an important part of a lucrative tournament in order to watch a boxing match. Television programming took precedent over being one of the final 16 players in a heads-up tournament. Plus, both he and his opponent agreed to do this, making it look even worse. They did not have any intention of delaying the tournament or harming the players in any way, but they looked pretty bad for doing what they did.
Granted, PokerStars does have a rule on its website that states, “There is no rule against choosing to sit out; a player doing so will continue to have blinds and antes posted and cards dealt”, but in reality, the two players broke the spirit of the rule. This statement was made for cases where someone needs to take a bathroom break or answer the door, not so that two opponents in a heads-up tournament can watch a sporting event that could take an hour to complete. Put simply, it´s just not cool.
While the extremely deep stacks, slowly escalating blinds, and quality of players remaining made it likely that all of the matches would take a long time to complete, the fact of the matter is that Anti-Matter and arbianight might have held up the other players. Who´s to say that the other contests would not have ended relatively quickly? The two boxing fans might have caused the other advancing players to wait for more time than necessary.
Additionally, Anti-Matter accused PokerStars of “ripping him off” in the subject line of his forum post, saying that the site refused to pay him the approximately $900 he felt he was owed to make up the difference between his equity in the tournament and the amount he actually won. While his correspondence with PokerStars was fairly civilized, the way he made the issue public was not the correct approach.
PokerStars
It´s simple. PokerStars failed to make it known anywhere, be it on its website or in the poker software, that if the two opponents in a heads-up tournament match sit out for 250 hands, it will end automatically. In fact, as I mentioned above, Stars´ site explicitly states that players may sit out. Making this known, even if it was in the fine print on the website, would have made the whole debate unnecessary.
To be fair, there is a reason for the unwritten rule. In the past, PokerStars had found that there were often tables where both players didn´t show up, usually in play money tournaments. As a result, the matches would go on and on and on with no end in sight until other players noticed and got in touch with the tournament staff. What happened with Anti-Matter – two players sitting out for a long time deep in a high buy-in tournament – was unprecedented.
But if PokerStars is going to program the poker software to have such a dramatic effect on the tournament, that information should be posted somewhere. Better yet, post the rule and pop-up a big warning message should the players start getting close to the 250 hand mark.
Aftermath
It took a few days for PokerStars to come to a decision, but the poker room did pay Anti-Matter the extra $900 he requested. It has also added the rule to its website, although the part that reads “Two or more players may not make any agreement to sit out simultaneously whether at the same table or different tables”, brings into question whether or not an agreement to sit out for a very short period of time, say, if someone has to use the facilities, would really be a violation of the rules. I suppose it would be, according to the letter of the law, but it is doubtful that something like that would be enforced.
For his part, Anti-Matter apologized for the accusatory thread title and requested that a moderator change it.