Putting the World Series of Poker online as a replacement for the summer series in Las Vegas was destined to be a bit complicated. The coronavirus pandemic has handily complicated everything.
Thus, the WSOP 2020 Online produced a schedule that put 31 of the 85 tournaments on the US-facing WSOP.com website and the other 54 events on the GGPoker network of sites. GGPoker and Natural 8 are the most popular of those sites and offer online poker service to many players outside of the United States.
The WSOP.com tournaments kicked off on July 1 and run one event per day throughout the month. The GGPoker tournaments kicked off on Sunday, July 19. The plan was to kick off the non-US series with three events that day.
Two of them didn’t run. One did and declared a champion from Japan.
Confusion and Frustration
Players around the globe were excited to be able to compete for a real WSOP gold bracelet from their homes. They didn’t have to travel to Las Vegas, adhere to casino rules, or even wear pants.
The first tournament on the GGPoker schedule was Event 32 of the series but the first on GG Network sites. It was a $100 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event called the Opener. Starting flights had already taken place in preceding days, and survivors gathered on Sunday to play Day 2 and all the way to a winner.
Play was to start at 2:00pm ET, but it was pushed out 30 minutes. In fact, due to what they thought was a “temporary load issue,” GG paused many tournaments. The event did get underway finally but only very briefly. GGPoker first noted that a “critical bug” required them to pause the tournament and reschedule it for 2:30pm ET on Sunday, July 26.
https://twitter.com/GGPokerOfficial/status/1284957067988676613?s=20
Meanwhile, Event 33, which was a $1,111 buy-in NLHE event to raise money for a Covid-19-related charity, also stopped.
GGPoker then announced that it would give T$100 to each of the 3,684 players still in Event 32. And for the charity event, GGPoker said it would double the amount collected for charity at that point, which was $177,378.
https://twitter.com/GGPokerOfficial/status/1284961645828046848?s=20
Confirmation of DDoS Attack and Loading Issues
After the people behind the scenes at GGPoker had time to properly examine what happened, they realized it was a “distributed denial of service” attack. Someone aimed the cyberattack directly at GGPoker and disrupted service.
They confirmed to PokerNews that there were two separate incidents plus a DDoS attack.
The first incident caused severe lags in table loading, tournament registration, and even cash game issues. GG attributed that to a server delay. GG called it a “service bottleneck” due to the large influx of players at one time.
The second incident was a “server-client protocol mismatch” that disconnected some clients. It happened when GG staff tried to increase late registration for events affected by the first incident.
Both of those incidents were resolved temporarily, and all issues will be properly remedied with “comprehensive fixes” set for July 24. This will cause downtime, but it should not interfere with the WSOP event scheduled that day.
Later that night, GGPoker experienced the DDoS attack. It penetrated the DDoS protections due to a previous server update that disrupted that shield. GG told PokerNews that the site not only fixed that shield but added a second one.
GGPoker tweeted a link to its status page for anyone wanting more information.
https://twitter.com/GGPokerOfficial/status/1285229166414254081?s=20
Let’s update those tournaments and provide the results of the one that did play to completion.
All information comes from PokerNews and WSOP live updates pages.
--PokerNews WSOP 2020 Online landing page--WSOP 2020 Online updates page
When Day 2 started on Sunday, July 19, seven of the opening flights had already played, and the eighth was playing out at that moment. Almost 3,500 players made it into Day 2, but that number didn’t account for those still coming in from Flight H.
What they knew at that point was that the tournament had recorded more than 29,000 entries, which put the prize pool well past the $2 million guarantee. And more than 3,000 players would finish in the money.
The information on PokerNews was the most comprehensive but may not be the final numbers.
Buy-in: $100Total entries (not confirmed): 29,306Prize pool (not confirmed): $2,571,216Players starting Day 2: 4,594Players remaining: 3,690
To be continued next Sunday…
https://twitter.com/RealKidPoker/status/1284968646222077952?s=20
GG Event 33: $1,111 NLHE for Covid Relief
This tournament got underway with quite a large number of people in action. These numbers are not confirmed as final, as there may be some open registration next Sunday when the tournament plays again. But this is where it stood when it stopped.
Buy-in: $1,111 ($111 directly to Caesars Cares for Covid relief)Total entries (not confirmed): 1,598Prize pool (not confirmed): $1,775,378Players remaining: 1,418
GG Event 34: $525 NLHE Bounty 6-Handed Super Turbo
This event actually got underway as scheduled and played out quickly, as happens with a super turbo structure. In less than 3.5 hours, the tournament was over, and the winner from Japan captured an inaugural bracelet.
Buy-in: $525Total entries: 2,214Prize pool: $1,107,000Paid players: 314Minimum payout: $567Winner: Shoma “pp_syon” Ishikawa (Japan) $117,6502nd place: Diego Ostrovich (Argentina) $86,9723rd place: Gary Johnson (Canada) $51,8014th place: Daniel Strelitz (Canada) $50,4315th place: Yulian Bogdanov (Bulgaria) $34,6776th place: Tom Delaine (Malta) $20,2257th place: Ilya Anatsky (Belarus) $20,3438th place: Mulgyeol Kim (China) $15,0309th place: Dimitar Yosifov (Bulgaria) $12,102
