Crashing Exclusive Tournaments – And Why Not

Many poker related sites (including PokerTube, of course) put a lot of time and effort into organizing exclusive tournaments for their loyal members. These tournaments are of high value for many different reasons, but primarily because there are usually decent amounts of money or valuable prizes added to the pool.

These type of tournaments often become a place of great fun where table banter among regular players is common. Players get to know each other better and it helps to bring the community closer together.

However, these tournaments are exclusive for a reason, as the added value would be watered down greatly if 2,000 people were allowed to play. In a usual scenario, there will be anywhere between 50 and 100 players taking it to the felt for free or for a small buy-in to compete for the first place prize that on its own often exceeds the total amount of buy-ins. Pretty sweet, but…

Enter party-crashers.

If you’ve ever played in one of these events, unless it was really restricted only to players who registered through a certain site, you must have noticed a lot of players who don’t belong there or who hang around, begging for the password in the chat. Who are these guys?

I cannot give a definitive answer to this question, but what I can say is that they can often ruin the experience for everybody; not only through their constant nagging to get in, but also because of their behavior once they are seated. They will often be very rude to the regular players (and everybody else for that matter) and behave as if they should be outright given the first place prize.

What these players fail to realize is that the entire purpose of these tournaments is to bring a certain community closer (rewarding them in the process), and that they are not particularly welcome as intruders. All they care about is making that extra money – which is not guaranteed to happen even if they win.

Exclusive tournaments are exactly what their name suggests, and if asked by a particular site hosting a tournament, the poker room would be more than happy to deny these players any money won in the tournament. And as much as they would cry about it, they would have no claim or rights to the prizes won, as they shouldn’t have been in the tournament in the first place.

While it may seem very attractive from a financial point of view, crashing exclusive tournaments by hunting and molesting people to obtain passwords is kind of scummy. The funny thing about it is that not many people would try to pull the same thing in a live environment, but online, some of the events seem plagued by these guys.

These tournaments are organized for the people who helped build certain online communities, through their participation in the forums and other active engagements of sorts. If this is not something you find particularly attractive, that’s fine, but then you do not belong in the events either.

I realize that the party crasher will not care much about this text, but wanted to share it just the same, if for no other reason than to voice a frustration of those who have to often deal with the unwanted guests in these tourneys.