Winning Millions Cancelled 4.5 Hours into Tournament (Updated)

Cyber Attacks Lead to Cancelled Million Dollar Poker Tournament

With 1,937 people registered and nearly forty-five minutes of late registration still remaining the tournament was paused and subsequently cancelled.  A message appeared on player’s tables telling them that the tournament was cancelled and people would be refunded as per the rules you can find here.  This was not the first interruption as the tournament had been stopped at least two times previously, because of the recent cyber-attacks.  The other tournaments scheduled for the day, with the exception of a select few, had also been cancelled, presumably to allow for a smoother time for record-breaking tournament.

The tournament has been rescheduled, or appears to be, for 2/22/2015.  It’s still not clear if this is official, or is some glitch in the system, but it is appearing in the tournament lobby.  If this is the case, then it should give Winning Poker Network time to get things under control and have a fair and equitable tournament, which is the reason they cancelled this one.  This at least provides hope for players that this isn’t going to keep the network down.

It’s currently unknown what exactly caused this to happen, as nothing more than that message on the table has been communicated to players as of writing this article, but the cyber-attacks have to be considered the most likely culprit.  These attacks had taken the form of DDoS attacks and other type of traffic disrupting attacks to make the site unstable and unplayable to players and create unfair advantages for those able to control them at their whim.

What the official network statement will be is still unclear, but it’s important to note that the CEO of WPN has been addressing the public during his recent broadcasts on Twitch.tv.  This is sure to be one of the first topics discussed during the next “Cage” event, where he has been holding these live chats, and it will be interesting to see what he has to say about it.  There are also forum reps available across different platforms so getting more information and plans won’t be impossible.  This is fortunate, because players will have more access than what other networks would be able to provide if something similar did happen.  Getting a satisfactory answer however will be nearly impossible, as there are few good excuses for what has transpired this marquee event.

This is a huge letdown for Winning Poker Network and it will be interesting to see how things develop in the next couple of days.  Everything surrounding this tournament is up in the air and it’s going to take a strong response from Winning Poker Network to ease the concerns of players, but it’s important to note that they decided to take the fair way of resolving this issue and not leave players out to dry.  While that silver lining is faint, it is still there.  Tell us what you think about this on Twitter and Facebook!

Update 12/14/14 11:00 PM ET: The CEO of WPN gave a very brief news conference on Twitch.tv where he talked about his reasoning behind cancelling the tournament and answered a few questions.  The reason the tournament was outright cancelled and refunds were given to all players is because he felt it was most fair since so many players had been effected by disconnects and lost chips when they shouldn't have. While many of his answers were what we expected them to be, he did assure players that they will not be going anywhere and that they will try this again.  He also said that if anyone was payed in T$ all they have to do is contact support and they will be compensated in regular $s.  He did seem very stressed, sad and frustrated with this evenings events, but is look to the future should comfort players that things are safe and secure.

Professional Rakeback has not lost faith in the WPN.  They are doing everything in their power to insure that something like this never happens again.  If you would like to learn more about the Winning Poker Network and the poker sites in encompases you can read more here and here.  If you'd like to learn more about other real money legal USA poker sites with lots of online poker tournament action, we invite you to read our Bovada Poker Review and our Carbon Poker Review.