PartyPoker ‘Security Risk’ Sees Festival Delayed
10 years ago
30 Sep
The 80-tournament online festival was due to kick off on Sunday with the first 12 events, but the entire event has now been pushed back to Sunday 25th of October as the site attempts to resolve the ‘technical problems’ which have seen players persistently disconnected during play.
“We understand that the postponement is frustrating and disappointing to you, our loyal customers,”
“But providing a service that gives you the best experience possible is our number one priority.”
The site is now offering a $50,000 free-roll as compensation for the disruption, which has seen the events and satellites for Pokerfest removed from the PartyPoker schedule, although the majority of non-festival play is planned to continue as usual.
The issues surrounding Pokerfest III, which also faced problems last year.
“Are currently being resolved until they are rectified,”
“I apologise to our loyal players for having to delay this highly anticipated event.”
Last year’s festival saw two events cancelled because of ‘Gibraltar ISP network issues’ and the recent announcement may be connected to a similar occurrence. However, often such problems are caused by targeted DDoS attacks with cyber-criminals seeking to extort money from the sites’ operators.
‘Distributed denial of service’ attacks are particularly prevalent during large events and major players in the poker world such as PokerStars and Unibet -among others – have been hit in the past, although operators are loathe to admit to such attacks.
The security of their systems are integral to the trust-worthiness of poker sites, and although there is nothing specific to suggest that PartyPoker have been hit in such a way, Golan Shaked said,
“With a total prize pool of $2,500,000 up for grabs, we are not willing to take even the slightest risk with our players’ experience during the 80 events that make up Pokerfest”
888 has also experienced ‘technical issues’ in recent months, which led them to introduce a ‘pause button’ for tournaments, allowing for play to be put on hold in the event of attacks and/or other severe problems.
Registered players affected by the latest PartyPoker disturbances will be contacted when new schedules are drawn up and will also, apart from the complimentary free-roll, receive their buy-ins back. Other entries, those won via satellites, etc, will still be valid for the revised Pokerfest schedule starting October 25th.
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