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On Sunday, GGPoker suffered major technical issues during one of their largest winter events, forcing them to halt all tournament gameplay. The crash happened during the $150 buy-in GGMasters Anniversary, which had over 20,000 entrants and a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million.
Poker player and former Big Brother Canada contestant Kevin Martin, who is also a current GGPoker ambassador, was live-streaming his play in the tournament when, just before the hour mark, his screen went black, and the site crashed for him. He would soon find out from his chat that it had crashed for everybody.
During his stream, he messaged his contacts at GGPoker and shared the following correspondence he received from the site’s developers.
“We are currently experiencing a system issue that is unable to connect to main lobby. Dev team is investigating now and will update the status. Due to unstable service conditions, all ongoing tournaments have been paused, and those scheduled to start have been canceled. If the server does not stabilize within five minutes, refunds will be issued for the ongoing tournaments. We will provide further updates regarding the ongoing GGMasters $150 5th anniversary, $5M GTD event.”
Tournaments paused
Shortly after the crash, GGPoker’s official X account posted the following statement:
“We are pausing all tournaments while we work to stabilize gameplay. Apologies for the sudden inconvenience here. More updates to follow.”
Many players quickly expressed concerns about their funds during the “pause,” replying to GG’s tweet to ask if their money was safe. In response, the GGPoker account reassured them that all funds were secure.
During his stream, Martin also explained his understanding of GG’s policies regarding tournament pauses and refunds. According to him, tournament funds are locked at the time of the initial crash. This means that if some players continued to collect blinds after the crash, it wouldn’t affect the final chip calculations, as all balances would be based on the moment the crash occurred.
Refunds and rescheduled
About 40 minutes after the original tweet about the crash, GGPoker then tweeted an update on the situation:
“GGMasters Anniversary has been paused and will resume on March 2 at 1700 UTC.
All other tournaments have been canceled and will be refunded as per the cancellation policy linked here. We sincerely apologize for this unforeseen interruption to gameplay today.”
UPDATE:
— GGPoker (@GGPoker) February 23, 2025
GGMasters Anniversary has been paused and will resume on March 2 at 1700 UTC.
All other tournaments have been cancelled and will be refunded as per the cancellation policy linked here.https://t.co/sCuuT9xTWu
We sincerely apologize for this unforeseen interruption to… https://t.co/or2qJwaqvX
The following day, GGPoker tweeted a link to an FAQ about the rescheduling of the tournament, with the main points being:
- The event will be rolled back to exactly when the disruption made it unfair for all players (19.10 UTC 02/23/2025).
- Any players who had registered and were still playing when the crash occurred and are unable to compete in the rescheduled event will be refunded their tournament fee of $12 as a goodwill gesture.
- Any players who had already been eliminated or had not registered before the crash will not receive a goodwill gesture.
- There will be no changes to the tournament structure or late registration period.
- Players already eliminated from the original tournament will not be able to enter the rescheduled event as it is a freezeout tournament.
