As the World Series of Poker keeps on trucking, GGPoker must be wondering if it all hasn’t turned out to be a bit of a poisoned chalice. In the short run, the rake money must have made a huge difference.
But in the long run, the WSOP has turned into a proving ground. And GGPoker seems to keep failing the test in very public ways.
For example, some nogoodnik managed to hack Kevin MacPhee's account. MacPhee was all the while playing the WSOP $500 Mini Main Event. But when he went to rebuy, he found he had "exactly 0.62 left in my account." They did this while he was playing, and as he pointed out, the software did not boot him out.
So, it seems that busting out of a tourney isn’t the only way GGPoker can lighten your digital wallet.
MacPhee's tweets about this issue (and others) began: “Last week while playing on @GGPokerOfficial my account was hacked mid-session and my entire balance was emptied out WHILE I WAS PLAYING. I have had constant DC issues, while playing other sites/browsing with no issues. I DC'ed while 6 handed for four 5k seats and blinded out...”
MacPhee’s problems didn’t end there. GG Support was helpful at first, then went quiet.
“GG discord support was helpful, but I wasn't able to get any follow up after my account was locked... I still don't know how this could have even happened.”
World Series of Problems
GGPoker managed to return MacPhee his funds in the end, but this is not the first trouble that GGPoker has had to handle very publicly.
The series has been so dogged by disconnects that even their ambassador Daniel Negreanu couldn’t stop himself from an expletive-ridden tirade. This while he was live streaming in a window with GGPoker ads framing him.
There have even been whole tournaments delayed because servers were unable to handle the number of players.
There is the ongoing story that GGPoker has had to spin around their banning of "bad pros" who do things like bum-hunting. This follows the furor surrounding a banned player who lost his bankroll. Confusing subsequent statements from GGPoker make it sound like the unnamed player lost his money for perfectly legal, but undesirable and terms-of-service-breaking behaviors like bum-hunting.
Determining who is bum-hunting and who just had to go pee the same time the whale left seems an arbitrary process. And players are left worrying that GGPoker will ban people for "winning too much."
They came for the bum-hunters and I said nothing...
GGPoker has a lot to do to reassure players that their site is safe, fair, and secure. And they need to do it before the series ends and the spotlight turns back to the big names in the industry.
“GG indeed”
This breach it also gives fuel to concerns about whether the site has effective anti-collusion, anti-bot, and anti-analytics software at work. For example, it appears that GGPoker’s software can’t tell when two different devices log into the same account.
In contrast, I get a message when another device connects to my Facebook account. And I haven't given Facebook my bank details and the working capital for my profession.
As MacPhee says in his Tweet, “GG indeed.”
