Last month Absolute Poker offered a tournament for Blackjack players entitled "Blackjack Blowout". The details of the tournament can be found here Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) . 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:
All of my 1093 winning hands featured an ace along with a ten, jack, queen, or king. On Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) 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
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:
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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.
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.
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:
All of my 1093 winning hands featured an ace along with a ten, jack, queen, or king. On Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) 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
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:
Expired Image
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.
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.
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