Slovak Tournament Officials, Players at Odds Over Prize Pool Guarantee

When is a guarantee not a guarantee? When it isn’t…um…guaranteed, I guess. Over the weekend, tempers flared at the Golden Vegas Poker Club in Bratislava, Slovakia when the exact definition of the word “guarantee” came into question.

The story of the controversy was relayed to the poker community on Two Plus Two by poster “Scarmaker.” The tournament in question, one with a small €300 buy-in but a sizeable €100,000 guaranteed prize pool, began on Thursday with the first of two starting flights. After Day 1A, it looked like the tournament would have trouble fielding enough players to accumulate the buy-ins in order to reach the €100,000 guarantee. Thus, says Scarmaker, many players re-entered on Day 1B thinking there would be an overlay.

They were right. The guarantee was not going to be hit naturally via buy-ins. But hey, that’s what the guarantee is there for. It is called a “guaranteed prize pool” because it is promised to be at least a certain amount – €100,000 in this case – no matter how many players enter the tournament.

Day 3 of the tournament on Sunday was to be the day the final nine players met to compete at the final table. They were told, though, that the prize pool was €86,666, not €100,000 as pledged. Tournament officials attempted to explain that it was not so much a “guaranteed prize pool” as it was a “guaranteed money pool,” meaning that fees for leader boards and staff still had to be subtracted. The final table players protested all of this, refusing to play until the extra money was put back in. It never was and the tournament was called off. Each player at the final table was eventually awarded their portion of the remaining prize pool based on an ICM calculation; the original plan was to divide the money up evenly amongst the nine.

According to Scarmaker, this sort of thing is not uncommon in Slovak events, which would make one wonder why the players didn’t anticipate something like this early on, perhaps check the published payout structure or ask the tournament director. The tournament was certainly advertised as having a €100,000 guaranteed prize pool – the graphics on the event’s site show as much – but if there could have been a question as to the guarantee’s veracity, someone should have probably checked on it earlier. That’s not to say I blame the participants, because even if there was something published that spoke of any fees taken out of the €100,000, it is still quite shady to promise something different than what is intended to be delivered.

In a live report provided on pokerportal.sc, tournament officials said in the midst of the dispute that players were sent mailings that advertised the tournament as having a guaranteed prize pool, but that was a “typographical” error. “To err is human,” they said. That excuse sounds dubious, as best.

Two Plus Two poster “aseHigh” told about a similar issue in the same thread. This one took place at the Live Events International Summer Cyprus festival in a €1,500 buy-in, €150,000 guaranteed tournament. He said that tourney only achieved 96 entries, causing it to fall short of the guarantee. When the prize pool was announced with 16 players remaining, though, it was set at €130,500, not €150,000. Tournament officials explained the 10 percent was taken from the prize pool as an entry fee and another 3 percent was removed to pay staff. The published information about the tournament schedule and structure does state this, so players should have known it ahead of time, but that is still not how one expects a guaranteed prize pool to work, so it is understandable that players were upset.