One cannot fault WSOP.com for the sheer quantity of online events they provide. As the Circuit Super Series winds up today, the online bracelet series is still in full swing.
The strangely-plural "Fall Online Championships" that debuted Sunday, with five events for players on the New Jersey and Nevada servers, continues through November 14. One of the events today brought Christmas early to a dozen lucky players, while creating another Hallowe'en moment for WSOP.com.
A controversial element of WSOP.com's high-profile events is the long period of late registration, which in some instances is as high as four hours. Coupled with late start times and deep starting stacks, this has seen the online bracelet events continuing until as late as 8:30 a.m. on the east coast.
This long late registration period appears to have encouraged an increasing number of players to late register for WSOP.com tournaments, purely as a matter of time efficiency and boosting hourly rate. Today that sensible approach backfired rather spectacularly for all but a dozen early birds, as noted on Twitter by Joseph Cheong:
"Cool 38k overlay on $1k plo 6max $50k guar on @WSOPcom bc it seems they forgot to allow late reg at all"
A quick look at the tournament lobby on the Nevada client revealed that this is precisely what happened. The area under "tournament info" that usually lists the period of late registration was completely blank.
A comedy of errors
A $38k overlay on a $50k guaranteed prize pool is pretty much unheard of under any circumstances, but to create one simply by "forgetting" to include late registration is spectacular. Put bluntly, real online poker sites do not make errors that one would expect to be ironed out within a few months of launch.
It has been the brand's Pennsylvania server that has dominated the news is this regard lately. Back in August, a suspected error in entering a tournament pay table led to 36 players cashing in a 66-player field. Adding to the site's blushes was the fact this was a high-profile, high-roller bracelet event.
Shortly thereafter, WSOP.com PA ran a PLO tournament in their Progressive Knock-Out series. It is generally accepted that PLO is a four-card poker variant, but WSOP.com's offering simplified the complexities of four hole cards by providing players with just two. In other words, PLO fans and specialists found themselves playing a no-limit hold'em tournament instead.
For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that the initial overlay today was worse than reported by Cheong, since only $955 of each buy-in was assigned to the prize pool. However, with free EV being thrown at them, some of the fortunate dozen took advantage of rebuying, adding another $9k to the prize pool. The net result was a formal loss of just under $30k to WSOP. However, had the normal late registration period occurred, the company would have attracted far more players and thus more rake.
And the brand would have avoided looking ridiculous.
Featured image source: Twitter
