Absolute Poker fails to stand by their tournament terms?

[Lelik]

Last month Absolute Poker offered a tournament for Blackjack players entitled "Blackjack Blowout". The details of the tournament can be found here http://www.absolutepoker.com/promoti...kjack-blowout/ . In short, the rules are as follows: for each of the first 21 days of April, the person who hits the largest number of blackjacks during that day gets 1000 dollars.

On April 17th I decided to participate, spent most of the day playing three-handed and hit a total of 1093 blackjacks. When I woke up next afternoon and looked at their scoreboard (still available on the page I referred to above) I saw that another player won the tournament. I also saw that he or she hit 1088 blackjacks which is less than I did.

I immediately emailed Absolute Poker support hoping to correct the mistake. However, their agent Rodney stated that only 1001 of my blackjacks counted, since for the remaining ninety-two I chose to take even money when the dealer showed an ace. When asked for the reason, they pointed me to the terms where it said that pushes and splits did not count. When I noted that those 92 cases were neither pushes nor splits, they said that even money also did not count. They also mentioned I took the 2nd place that day.

I am confident that Absolute Poker is violating their own terms and depriving me of the prize I fully deserved. Those terms can be found on the same page I referred to above. Let me go over the three relevant bullet points:

Only natural Blackjacks qualify for this promotion. The winning hand must feature an Ace along with a ten, jack, queen or king.

All of my 1093 winning hands featured an ace along with a ten, jack, queen, or king. On another page of their web site Absolute Poker defines "natural" as "a total hand value of 21 in the first two cards", which is the same thing as A plus 10, J, Q, or K

Blackjack hand must be a winning hand. Pushed hands do not count.

When a player chooses "even money" payment on the blackjack he gets his initial bet back together with the same money amount in addition to it, which definitely constitutes a win. I further attach a screenshot of a blackjack table taken after a player chose even money payment:



It can be seen that, the subscript clearly says "player wins". So it is a winning hand.Also note that I did have a total of 25 blackjacks that pushed (that's where the dealer showed a Ten and even money was not offered) and I did not count them in my total of 1093.

Blackjack must be hit with first two (2) cards dealt. Blackjacks in split hands do not qualify.

All of my blackjacks were hit with the first two cards dealt. None of them were in split hands. In fact, I never split during that day in order to be able to play more hands. Due to not splitting and otherwise bending the basic strategy for speed purposes I suffered an additional loss for a total of circa 150 dollars. Thus, due to a terms violation on the part of AP, not only did I miss the prize, but also lost my own money.

Let me finally note that in one of the letters Rodney mentioned that even money blackjacks were not counted for other players too. This I believe is the moot point here. Together with the information about me being on the second place it even goes in my favor. One can see that the player who is listed as the winner for April 17th also won the tournament on April 9th and April 14th. So he or she definitely knew that AP (incorrectly) miscounted even money blacks. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that this player ever took even money on April 17th. Therefore his total would stay at 1088 regardless of how you counted it.

In summary I would like to say that based on my play, tournament terms, and information provided in emails from support I can conclude that I am the winner on April 17th. It does not matter for me now whether they will reconsider the winners on the other days since this is beyond the scope of my complaint.

[addaminsane]

that sucks to hear. I always here bad things about absolute poker although they were the first place i ever played poker online and I always had a good experience there. My debit card was always accepted and the 3 times i actually one a worthwhile amount of money i got a check for it in a very timely manner.

I also used to think they had the best vip program and alot of perks to playing there. Of course i rarely played cash games, mostly 40+4 short handed sngs and maximum of $40 multi-table tourneys.

[4 of a kind]

You're argument sounds reasonable, yet I think your point could be argued. Since taken even money (technically a winner) was never discussed in the rules, they did specify what does only count. In addition this rule (* Any resulting disqualification or security decisions are final.) sounds pretty final.

Ever since that poker scandal at Absolute, I certainly don't ever play their anymore. Based on how that whole scandal came down, with player data breaking it open, knowing they actually were holding that information they gave out by mistake. This place certainly don't get a second chance at that first impression.

In addition with your case, the fact that a technical rule such as taking even money was not specifically addressed, is just another sign of bush-league incompetence.

How about that one guy that won seven of the 21 games???? Pretty interesting....

[pokeraddict]

Were you playing $.10 a hand in those games that day too? I could see that being a problem. So you played 22,000ish hands on a day and wagered $2200 not including doubles. The theoretical juice assuming 10% double/splits would still only be about $11. I wonder how much the other guy wagered. Also why are you taking insurance? Do you not think the game is legit? If not why are you playing it? Also here is some interesting math although a small sample size. The dealer showed an ace at least 92 times out of 1093 blackjacks. That is about 10% more than expected isn't it? OP, did you take insurance every time the dealer showed an ace?

[GrandMaster]

Even money means that you take insurance against the ace, and if your blackjack wins, you lose the insurance, if your blackjack pushes, you win the insurance, and either way you win your original bet. According to the tournament rules, winning blackjacks should be counted, i.e., when the dealer did not have blackjack and insurance should be ignored.

[Pinababy69]

I'd be more interested to know why ANYONE (not just the OP) even plays at Absolute Poker? I'll never understand humans.

[Lelik]

Even money means that you take insurance against the ace, and if your blackjack wins, you lose the insurance, if your blackjack pushes, you win the insurance, and either way you win your original bet. According to the tournament rules, winning blackjacks should be counted, i.e., when the dealer did not have blackjack and insurance should be ignored.

Thank you for your thoughts, but let me disagree. The terms never mentioned anything about "winning blackjacks". They mention "blackjacks" (an ace and a face card) and "winning hands" (as opposed to "pushes"). Both conditions are satisfied in my case. Furthermore, as you can see on the screen shot above, their software itself says "blackjack" and "player wins"
next to the hand in question.

[Lelik]

Since taken even money (technically a winner) was never discussed in the rules, they did specify what does only count. In addition this rule (* Any resulting disqualification or security decisions are final.) sounds pretty final.

No they do not just specify what does only count. They explicitly specified pushes and splits as something that did not count. No mention of "even money" though. Neither did they say that "only blackjacks paid 3:2 qualify" (which would be the fastest and most accurate way to describe the rules the way they are now trying to interpret them).

Also, it has nothing to do with the security. That clause applies to a case when they have a reason to believe someone hacked their software or server, so they are saying they won't let him argue in this case.

[GrandMaster]

Thank you for your thoughts, but let me disagree. The terms never mentioned anything about "winning blackjacks". They mention "blackjacks" (an ace and a face card) and "winning hands" (as opposed to "pushes"). Both conditions are satisfied in my case. Furthermore, as you can see on the screen shot above, their software itself says "blackjack" and "player wins"
next to the hand in question.

The current terms state "Blackjack hand must be a winning hand. Pushed hands do not count."

[SergiyK]

The current terms state "Blackjack hand must be a winning hand. Pushed hands do not count."

So it is a Blackjack hand and it is a winning hand according to the screenshot atached by OP.