Trials of a Poker Apprentice: Taking off the kid gloves

I'm a little bit irate today, after apparently getting the shaft from a poker site. I won't name the site at this time, as I am still awaiting a reply from them regarding my complaint and I would like to give them a chance before publicly tearing them a new asshole.

In short, I was playing a tournament yesterday when the server crashed. At the time of the crash, we were waiting for one more player to bust before reaching the money. It was only a $5 tourney, so the amount of money involved isn't really all that important. What is important to me, the more I sit and stew about it, is how the poker site in question has apparently taken advantage of a server crash to steal the players' money.

Full details of what happened can be found in the complaint I have sent to them, which I am pasting below:

Yesterday, I was playing in the $5+.50 rebuy tourney that started at 1:15 p.m. EDT when the server crashed, freezing all of the tournaments then being played. The tournament started with 288 players and, at the time of the crash, there were 21 players left, with the top 20 finishing in the money. At the time of the crash, I was somewhere around 16th or 17th position, and the number 21 player had less than one big blind left.

I contacted support via the Live Chat option to ask what would be done about the frozen tournament, and received a vague reply that you were looking into it and that once you had come to a conclusion, you would notify me by email.

It is now a day later and I have still received no email. However, I checked my account with this site and saw that you have put a $5 tournament ticket in my account. I ask how this can even be remotely fair?

For one, I sincerely doubt that the 267 players who had busted out at the time of the server crash were refunded their buy-ins. Therefore, their $1,468.50 in INITIAL tournament fees has been unfairly taken from the players. That doesn't even count their rebuys.

Second, if for some strange reason you did refund the buy-ins to all 288 players, even though 267 had already busted out at the time of the crash and were not affected by it, I only received my initial buy-in, even though I made a rebuy on the very first hand so I could start the tournament with a double stack. If you have decided to take this unfair approach, then I should be due at least $10.50 for the total amount I contributed to the prize pool. If you didn't refund rebuys, then you have unfairly taken over $600 from the players.

It seems to me that a far more equitable resolution to this would have been to adjust the payouts to 21 players left in the tournament and pay them based on their standing at the time the tournament crashed. Or you could have split the $2,100 prize pool evenly among the remaining players, giving everyone $100. By doing otherwise, you are either stealing the rebuys or stealing the money the busted out players had contributed to the prize pool.

I am highly displeased with how my initial query has been handled (failing to email me with the details of the resolution) and for the apparent mishandling of players' money in the prize pool. I will expect a reply and a satisfactory resolution within 24 hours, as stated on your website, before I forward my complaint to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter.

Stay tuned for how this one works out. I will post details as they become available.