Question about Ultimate Bet tourneys not being fair

[jasonkm1]

Hello,
I'm new to UB and was wondering something about the tourneys. I signed up for a $17,000 guaranteed tourney that had a start time of 4pm at 3:59pm. There was a $100+$9 fee with only about 150 people entered. I signed up because it seems like it would be a good deal, with UB covering the extra $2000 or so in prize money. At 4 pm nothing happened; I know from playing other sites that the tourney tables just open up automaticaally. Then I look and see that they changed the time to 4:30, presumbly to get more players so they don't have to lay the extra $2000. Isn't this kind of dishonest? Whey call it a guarantee $17000 prize money tourney if they won't start it at the time listed if they don't have enough players to cover the $17000? I tried to back out of the tourney once I found this out but it is nonrefundable. The other place that I play these guaranteed tourneys is at WSEX poker and they never do this kind of thing.

[MicroBob]

If UB really is delaying the start-times of their guaranteed tourneys in order to cut-down the overlay in their prize-pool then I agree it is pretty cheap and dishonest and I wouldn't play in them anymore.

I haven't played UB in awhile but was considering it...partly based on the promotional e-mails I have receiveed regarding their 'guaranteed' tourneys since I suspected there would be some value in some of these.

Based on your account i will think twice about participating in these guaranteed tourneys.

I believe there are many sites out there that still have decent overlay tourneys that don't delay their starts like that.

[obeythekitten]

i dont believe a word of what he wrote, i have NEVER heard of UB moving the start time of a tournament, i'd be willing to bet that you simply misread the text.

if this is true, then post the tournament confirmation email that UB sends out with the start time (edit out your username if you want)

[jasonkm1]

I emailed them when at 4pm when I couldn't get onto the tourney. I was confused, thinking maybe I didn't do something right. This is their reply.


Hello,

Sorry for the inconvenience. we have rescheduled this tournament for 4:30 and the ID is 28408. Please make sure to be logged in 15 minutes before and the system will take you automatically to your table.

Please contact us if you need any further assistance.

Best regards,

Tony
Customer Service

[Scotty O]

[ QUOTE ]
i dont believe a word of what he wrote, i have NEVER heard of UB moving the start time of a tournament, i'd be willing to bet that you simply misread the text.

if this is true, then post the tournament confirmation email that UB sends out with the start time (edit out your username if you want)

[/ QUOTE ]

They did move the time from 4 to 4:30 I was looking at that tourney as well. It may be in their aggreement that "times are subject to change without notice". I will try and find it about their tourneys

Scotty O

[Scotty O]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
i dont believe a word of what he wrote, i have NEVER heard of UB moving the start time of a tournament, i'd be willing to bet that you simply misread the text.



if this is true, then post the tournament confirmation email that UB sends out with the start time (edit out your username if you want)

[/ QUOTE ]

They did move the time from 4 to 4:30 I was looking at that tourney as well. It may be in their aggreement that "times are subject to change without notice". I will try and find it about their tourneys

Scotty O

[/ QUOTE ]


Found it, Line #28 in MTT rules.

"UltimateBet.com reserves the right to change any tournament time, guaranteed prize pool, or event without notice"

http://www.ultimatebet.com/rules-strategy/tournament-general-rules.html

If it is posted UB is not doing anything unfair and they are adhering to their stated rules.

Scotty O

[MicroBob]

I would be willing to bet that almost all sites have language to this effect.
That doesn't mean that it's dishonest to try to get around having to pay more of an overlay though.


Lets says UB decided to take today's 4pm tourney and move it to...oh, next Wednesday at 5 a.m.
They refuse to give any of the entry-fees back because there is language that says they reserve the right to re-scehdule the start-time as they see fit. Lots of players aren't able to make it at the re-scheduled time.

Just because they SAY they can do as they please doesn't make it right.


Many sites reserve the right to confiscate your funds if they determine a legitimate reason to do so.
This doesn't mean that just taking everyone's funds makes it 'right' EVEN though they said ahead of time that they were allowed to and EVEN though there is really nothing out there to stop them.


Just my thoughts on the matter.
I don't care what UB says in their T&C's.
If they show a habit of moving the start-times of their guaranteed-tourneys to cut-down on the overlay then I'm one customer who will certainly NOT be participating in them.

[GrannyMae]

i have NEVER heard of UB moving the start time of a tournament
i'd be willing to bet that you simply misread the text

now you have. you should apologize to the OP

plenty of sites delay guaranteed tourneys. sure, it is kind of cheesy, but they are well within their rights to do so. in the case of a re-buy event, sometimes it actually benefits the players to delay it.

[jasonkm1]

thanks for the replies. I'm new to the tourneys and UB and didn't know if this is normal or not. Microbob exressed exactly what I was feeling though about their "rules and regulations" . Anyway it's not really a big deal, but I usually only enter tourneys where there is that overlay so I'll probably stay away from UB in the future.

[mcozzy1]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree it is pretty cheap and dishonest and I wouldn't play in them anymore.

[/ QUOTE ]

Me, too. That's a pretty empty promotion.

I haven't played on UB since 2 bad experiences with them. The first was a SNG. It was down to 5 players. I was in first with more than 5,000 of the 10,000 chips in play and had just picked up KK. No one else was even close in chips. The Ultimate Bet servers then crashed. Their solution was to refund everyone (even the players who were eliminated) their buy-in fee. That just didn't seem fair to me. I asked them for 3rd place money.....they couldn't even do that.

A month later, there was a significant amount of money missing from my account (I record each session down to the dollar in 3 different places and knew for sure it wasn't anything I had missed). They could not explain this.

I don't think they're dishonest and their customer service had been pretty good, I don't play there anymore despite lots of bonus dollars sitting in my account. I do miss their fast, clear software though.

[Scotty O]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I agree it is pretty cheap and dishonest and I wouldn't play in them anymore.

[/ QUOTE ]

Me, too. That's a pretty empty promotion.

I haven't played on UB since 2 bad experiences with them. The first was a SNG. It was down to 5 players. I was in first with more than 5,000 of the 10,000 chips in play and had just picked up KK. No one else was even close in chips. The Ultimate Bet servers then crashed. Their solution was to refund everyone (even the players who were eliminated) their buy-in fee. That just didn't seem fair to me. I asked them for 3rd place money.....they couldn't even do that.

A month later, there was a significant amount of money missing from my account (I record each session down to the dollar in 3 different places and knew for sure it wasn't anything I had missed). They could not explain this.

I don't think they're dishonest and their customer service had been pretty good, I don't play there anymore despite lots of bonus dollars sitting in my account. I do miss their fast, clear software though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you ask to see if anyone logged onto your account? Did you change your password after the incident?

I don't know. I pretty much play there because of their software and customer service.

As for the other poster, I would decide to NOT play at UB because they moved the time of a tourney. This is the first time I have ever seen them do it.

[mcozzy1]

[ QUOTE ]
Did you ask to see if anyone logged onto your account? Did you change your password after the incident?


[/ QUOTE ]

No one logged in and withdrew money. I had UB e-mail the hand histories for the period of time in which the money disappeared, so I know no one else logged in and played (which would be a very strange hacker thing to do anyways). I changed my password and withdrew all my money as soon as I found out. Scared the bejesus out of me actually. I beefed up security on my computer as much as I could.

[ QUOTE ]
I pretty much play there because of their software and customer service

[/ QUOTE ]

I would agree 100% up until the last two incidents. The refunded buy-in on the SNG pissed me off, then the missing money thing happened like 2 days later. It was just too much to take from one site in such a short period of time.

I do still have TEC chip there, so I'll have to go use that at some point.

I haven't found any software I like near as much as the UB software. It is awesome.

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
"UltimateBet.com reserves the right to change any tournament time, guaranteed prize pool, or event without notice"

[/ QUOTE ]
This is a necessary rule to have. Servers fail. Site Internet connections die. An emergency could bring a large part of the Internet down or cause a power failure across half of North America.

They need the right to address problems that make it impossible or unfair to conduct the game without assuming liability.

That doesn't make it honest for them to delay the tournament just to drum up business.

The real question is why did they do this? Before anyone condemns them it would be appropriate to write them and ask why they delayed the tournament and what their policy is when a guarenteed tournament is undersubscribed.

It's entirely possible that something was wrong behind the scenes. Maybe hardware was temporarily offline and they couldn't add that many new tables until they got it back. OP says he signed up at 3:59. Maybe the site was down until shortly before he logged on and signed up and they felt they needed to give people more time to register.

UB has a good reputation. Ask them about this incident.

[detroitplayer]

If they are advertising a guaranteed tournament, undersubscription shouldn't even be an issue as to whether or not it starts on time.

They could do a "guaranteed $1M" tourney, and just keep pushing it back until the prize pool reached $1M. And if you're going to operate like that, then the whole idea of a "guaranteed prize pool" is pretty meaningless.

[jasonkm1]

It's entirely possible that something was wrong behind the scenes. Maybe hardware was temporarily offline and they couldn't add that many new tables until they got it back. OP says he signed up at 3:59. Maybe the site was down until shortly before he logged on and signed up and they felt they needed to give people more time to register.

UB has a good reputation. Ask them about this incident.

[/ QUOTE ]

I signed up for the tourney at 3:59, but I was logged on from 2:30 and playing the regular tables but watching that tournament. People were signing up so I don't believe there were problems there. The reason I waited until one minute before is I only wanted to play the tourney if there was going to be that overlay so I had to wait until the last moment.

I don't think it's that big a deal that they wanted to push the tourney back to get more players-- I mean their running a business and need to make profits, but in cases like this they should let people withdraw and get a refund since the only reason I signed up was because of the overlay. Once they pushed the game back to 4:30 it ended up having around 200 people in it, which made it just a normal tourney with normal odds. I did ask them about this incident but they just replied with that email I posted earlier, which really didn't explain much.

[LinusKS]

The fact that they're running a business makes it that much more important they don't cheat their customers.

They don't have a "right" to make a profit on tournament any more than you have a right to win.

If UB is changing tournament times to suit their needs at the expense of their players, I wouldn't play there (not that I do now.)

[ QUOTE ]
It's entirely possible that something was wrong behind the scenes. Maybe hardware was temporarily offline and they couldn't add that many new tables until they got it back. OP says he signed up at 3:59. Maybe the site was down until shortly before he logged on and signed up and they felt they needed to give people more time to register.

UB has a good reputation. Ask them about this incident.

[/ QUOTE ]

I signed up for the tourney at 3:59, but I was logged on from 2:30 and playing the regular tables but watching that tournament. People were signing up so I don't believe there were problems there. The reason I waited until one minute before is I only wanted to play the tourney if there was going to be that overlay so I had to wait until the last moment.

I don't think it's that big a deal that they wanted to push the tourney back to get more players-- I mean their running a business and need to make profits, but in cases like this they should let people withdraw and get a refund since the only reason I signed up was because of the overlay. Once they pushed the game back to 4:30 it ended up having around 200 people in it, which made it just a normal tourney with normal odds. I did ask them about this incident but they just replied with that email I posted earlier, which really didn't explain much.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Beavis68]

the whole gauranteed thing is a crappy promotion, all the almost all the tourney's fill up past the G amount anyway.

there is no reason to delay, if there was a problem, cancel the tourney. That is really BS. I liked the added tourney's much better, that is a real bonus to the players, the gaurantee is a cost free promotion.

and UB is my favorite site - but I think there is a reason why they are not gaining customers like Party and PS are.

[FlFishOn]

I've played a couple $33 tourneys with a guarantee. All were overlays, costing UB more than the $3 rake, sometimes quite a bit more. All started on the dot of 8pm as advertized.

This site is well respected, well backed and I'm quite surprised. Hammer them over this. It's a bullsh+t move by an otherwise good outfit.