America’s Cardroom (ACR) kicked off its Progressive Knock Out Super Series (PKOSS) on May 9 and announced a whopping $25 million in guaranteed prize pool.
PKOSS is the largest tournament series in ACR history. It featured a total of 146 events, with entry fees starting at $6.60, all the way up to $1,050. The festival wrapped up this week and was able to smash its initial guarantee, but not without issues.
Technical Glitch Hits PKOSS
On May 24, surviving players of three of the final PKOSS events, Event #137 ($2.5M GTD, $630 buy-in), Event #138 ($1M GTD, $215 buy-in), and Event #139 ($250K GTD, $16.50 buy-in), entered Day 2. However, the action was eventually suspended as players reported a number of issues, from not being able to access the tournaments to being suddenly disconnected.
While ACR’s technical team responded to the reports right away and attempted to fix the glitch as quickly as possible, they encountered more issues along the way, prompting organizers to decide to resume the action later in the day. While the other tournaments scheduled for that day were able to proceed, developers were not able to get the three events in question back up and running.
The site also thought about rescheduling Day 2 of the three events to next Tuesday, June 1, but there’s no assurance that all of the remaining players would show up, especially if they also have other prior commitments for that day.
In the end, ACR decided to cancel the events and offered to issue refunds and bonus tournament tickets to the affected players. ACR was also forced to cancel a big tournament in 2020 due to overlays.
On May 26, ACR ambassador Chris Moneymaker told players via his Twitter account that the events had been cancelled and that players would still receive payouts based on their chip counts. Moneymaker also added that all of the affected players would get bonus tournament tickets which they could use in future tournaments with the same entry fee as the cancelled events.
ACR Issues Refunds
Later in the day, the site confirmed Moneymaker’s tweet via an official announcement. Players were compensated through ICM payouts, as per the site’s rules and guidelines on cancelled events. Bounties were also refunded, and tourney tickets issued. ACR’s support team also notified players of an earlier credit/debit pair of transactions on their accounts, which had been cleared as soon as the ICM payouts were finalized.
Affected players should get their refunds within 72 hours; otherwise, they must contact customer support for further assistance.
While the ACR team handled the situation to the best of their ability, many players still expressed their disappointment and frustration at what happened. That’s normal reaction considering that all of them were really looking forward towards completing the events and potentially take home sizable cash.
Some hit out at the site for not keeping them well-updated about the issues, though others also appreciated the operator’s efforts to compensate them.
Players Get An Apology
ACR issued an apology to all affected players via Twitter, and promised to “do better” to make up for the recent troubles.
The PKOSS was designed to mimic the site’s popular Online Super Series (OSS), while adding the progressive knockout (PKO) element. PKO has become a huge hit among players in recent years due to its unique format and opportunities for bigger winnings which come in the form of bounties.
ACR is a US-facing site which operates as a subsidiary of the Winning Poker Network (WPN). It has recently stepped up its efforts to grow its player base by hosting massive tournaments and signing high profile pros to represent the brand.
In February, Chris Moneymaker joined the site as one of its ambassadors, just weeks after he parted ways with PokerStars, his home for 17 long years. More recently, ACR also added Vanessa Kade to its team. Kade was previously involved in a dispute with GGPoker over the operator’s decision to sign Dan Bilzerian as brand ambassador.
