Americas Cardroom Still Under DDoS Attack?

Problems continue to plague Americas Cardroom.

The most recent issues began during the first week of August and continued for more than one week. Americas Cardroom attributed disconnection problems to DDoS attacks but seemed to finally stave them off after a week.

However, more problems ensued on August 21 and continued through the following day. It is unclear if those issues are now resolved or if players will continue to suffer through disconnections and the inability to access the site, leaving them blinded down or out of tournaments. Refunds are being issued, by all accounts, but it remains unclear as to whether the site – or the entire Winning Poker Network – is under another DDoS attack or another glitch that must be fixed.

A Long August for ACR

On August 5, the first day of the MOSS (Mini Online Super Series), Americas Cardroom reported “technical issues” on social media but quickly realized it was a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, which they also reported via Twitter. Moments later, they cancelled all tournaments and refunded players.

Tournaments have been cancelled and refunded as per our terms and conditions

— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) August 5, 2018

Later that night and after another attack, they reported that the first three events of the MOSS were cancelled but the next day was scheduled as planned. That all changed with more attacks on August 6 and 7, and the Twitter account went silent for much of the rest of the week, with the exception of a tweet to an article that pointed the virtual finger at PartyPoker for its DDoS troubles that had started during the week, while not addressing ACR’s own.

Attacks returned on August 12, and ACR took to Twitter again, first to promote the MOSS Main Event and then to address issues that seemed to be related to protocol but not DDoS. The event did get underway and exceed its guarantee, though players received no update as to the source of or solution to the problem earlier in the day.

Our techs are working on looking into the "checking for protocol" issue that some customers are having. Apologies for the inconvenience.

— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) August 12, 2018

From that point, the OSS (Online Super Series) began on August 13, and all seemed smooth through the first days and weekend of the site’s main signature tournament series. That ended on August 21, though, when “technical issues” prompted the cancellation of an OSS event and other tournaments.

Update: All Running and late registration tournaments except the OSS #52 and the Extreme Tuesdays will be canceled. Apologies for the inconveniences.

— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) August 21, 2018

Again, troubles resumed later that night, which the social media operator joked about and referred to as “really small technical difficulties.”

We sincerely apologize for the pause in gameplay. We will resume all tournaments at 9.25pm ET. We are making sure all players have returned to their seats. You can restart the client or manually take all your seats.

— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) August 22, 2018

On August 22, more problems occurred, and Americas Cardroom noted that it was restarting the cash game server “for maintenance,” after which all tables were reportedly back up.

Only a few days remain in the OSS, as it ends on Sunday, August 26. Since it is unclear if the problems of the past few days are related to the previous DDoS attacks this month, it is impossible for players to know if the rest of the series will be free from disconnections and other issues that might interfere with their tournaments, much less cash games as evidenced by the most recent cash game server issue.

Transparency, Please

One way to make the problems plaguing Americas Cardroom in August less troublesome is if the site or its network were more transparent. A blog post about the problems, DDoS attacks or otherwise, could not only serve as an apology but a reassurance to players that solutions are being implemented to keep this from being a recurring problem.

However, instead of addressing their own issues, Americas Cardroom has offered two articles on its blog that point to DDoS attacks happening to other sites. One was written to focus on the PartyPoker issues, which that site addressed in a very transparent way on its own blog without mentioning any competitors, and another was written as PokerStars suffered its own DDoS problems, that article focusing on initial complaints from players. What the writer failed to do was a follow-up article to explain that PokerStars actually resolved the reimbursement issues and set up $65K worth of freerolls as a goodwill gesture.