GGPoker has canceled its GGMasters Anniversary tournament after a planned restart of the event experienced technical difficulties twice on Monday.
The $5 million tournament was rescheduled for Monday after the GGPoker platform crashed last week during the same event. Players were all set to restart but a table balancing issue caused chaos at the beginning of Day 2.
"Thanks for your patience," GGPoker said on X while announcing a pause in the tournament. "We will update this thread asap."
The next update came with a planned rollback to the beginning of Day 2 before a final message canceled the tournament altogether.
Players were refunded based on the GGPoker policy, spreading 50% of the prize pool among the remaining players and distributing the remaining 50% based on the chip counts.
Players react to cancellation
The chaos caused some players to be seated heads-up at the beginning of the day, even those who had registered late for the tournament. Some busted early on short stacks with small tables, leading to confusion about their status in any potential rollback. The confusion continued while a reset was attempted unsuccessfully.
Many of the aggrieved players took to X in the wake of the cancellation.
"These apologies and refunds really go not cut it," Craig 'CraigAbs' Abernathy said on X. "Do you realise many rec players rearrange their life/work to play a one off special event advertised like this."
Other players, especially those with big chip stacks, were especially unhappy with just a refund.
"Terrible management," said FaZeClan member Luke 'iuKeEe' Dainton on X. "I, along with many others, rearranged our schedules for this potentially life-changing prize pool. I was in a strong position to finish well in the money (ITM), and all I get is my buy-in refunded? What a complete joke."
Players all over X shared similar screenshots, like this one from @Gimli640, which offers a final word from GGPoker:
A problem with the table manager is preventing tables from merging. We tried to fit it in real-time but could not. We will have to cancel the tournament and refund all players. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Please look out for future announcements.
Photo courtesy of X/@Gimli650
