Delayed/Postponed/Cancelled etc

Following the disappointment of missing out on the Philippines package recently, there have been a couple more setbacks in my plans to play more live poker this year.  Firstly, WongaMan found this promotion on this random euro site that involved getting together a team of four players to play series of online tournaments, where points would be awarded based on your position in them, and the eventual winning team would get a $60k package to the WSOP.  This seemed like a great opportunity because the players on this site were apparently terrible (stakes rarely ran above 1/2), the competition was barely promoted anywhere (I couldn't even find information about it on the internet, you had to download the client and find out through there, but this was also a challenge), and the player pool on the site seemed so small that there would be a big overlay.  As well as this our team was going to be WongaMan, BrotherMuzone, MrNicess and myself, which is a team that could only be challenged by perhaps Durrrr, Ivey, Antonius and Galfond.

As it turned out, the promotion was a bit too good to be true because they first changed some of the rules and postponed it for a week, and then postponed it again with no clues as to when or if it will start.  I'm assuming they realised not enough people entered to make it profitable so pulled the plug completely. A similar situation has happened with the Victory Poker contest that I mentioned in a previous blog.  Mark and the other contestants were told they would be flying out sometime in February and I was starting to get skeptical about it as the month was getting closer and closer with no definite dates put in place.  Apparently there was trouble finding a week or whatever that everyone was free for.  Oh wow what shocker,  30 odd people weren't free at the same time.  Remember most of these people are not going to be professional poker players, they are people with jobs that can't just go anywhere at the drop of a hat and and will need notice.  So they have now delayed the competition, also not giving the contestants any solid clues as to when it may happen.  It wouldn't surprise me if it just gets cancelled altogether....obviously after the site has changed the plans another five times and made a load more promises that they can't fulfill.  Oops, got a bit ranty there.

Not sure if it is just coincidental that I have been affected by very poor management by poker companies within a short space of time of whether it's a sign that a lot of them are badly run, or simply struggling at the moment.  Maybe I'm overreacting a bit and expect too much from these companies whom you entrust with handling large sums of money.  Though I remember recently when PKR forgot to put a password on Facebook for a freeroll and all the freeroll regs were absolutely furious that they couldn't have this particular opportunity to win free money at no risk.  This resulted in a very long thread where some of the pkr staff apologised and promised to try to not let it happen again.  I think this is a tad more forgivable than the cases I have described.

Poker has been frustrating this week.  Not for running bad reasons, but because my internet connection has been shoddy all week (well, all year so far really).  I haven't even tried phoning Virgin yet because a forum thread on the Virgin Media website warns you that you just get put through to a foreign call centre (uh oh racist/xenophobe alert) where they have a script about restarting your computer/modem/wireless router which they struggle to deviate from despite your insistence you have done these things and other people in your area are having the same problem.  I went into the Virgin Media shop down the road and obviously the assistant knew nothing of a problem with internet speeds locally.  I intended to get two internet connections a while ago to hopefully eliminate costly disconnections but never got round to it so I may just end up signing up with another ISP.  Even if this costs me say £200 a year, I'm sure it costs me more than this every year from pots I lose when I disconnect.  I'm not sure if it's difficult to set up two connections where the secondary one automatically kicks in when the primary one goes down, I can't imagine it's that hard.

Off to Manchester to play GUKPT this week for a £500 freezeout on Tuesday and then the £1000 main event at the weekend.  Actually looking forward to playing live poker for once, (maybe because I know I can't disconnect in the middle of a hand) so hopefully this leads to some live run good!