PokerStars Struck By Major Connectivity Problems At Weekend

Home » Poker News » PokerStars Struck By Major Connectivity Problems At Weekend

Wednesday, April 15th, 2015 | Written by Lucy Brown

As the biggest poker room on the planet, PokerStars has invested millions of dollars on the latest computing technology, but even the online giant is not immune to the server and connectivity issues which spoiled its players’ fun over the weekend. As a result, thousands of PokerStars customers found themselves unable to play their favorite games on the site, while others were suspended mid-tournament and were subsequently issued refunds. Needless to say, the situation did not go down at all well, and echoing the wave of complaints heard from the site’s customers, meSLYFOX wrote:

“This is unbearable.. Has PokerStars made a statement yet? If not, Euro sites here I come.”

Three Days Of Problems

PokerStars has one of the most enviable track records in the industry when it comes to server reliability and security, but over the past year the site has experienced a number of unexpected issues which have increasingly frustrated its legion of customers. The latest incident lasted for at least three days, and started on the evening of Friday April 10th with players across the whole of Europe affected.

The PokerStars tech team subsequently attempted to resolve its lag and time out issues by forcing a server restart, resulting in cash games being paused and tournaments having their starting times rescheduled. That initially seemed to do the trick and soon after PokerStars’ official spokesperson, Lee Jones, tweeted:

“Seems @PokerStars connection issue is resolved. If you had updater/connection issues, please try again. Thanks for your patience.”

Nevertheless, PokerStars’ judgement soon proved premature and before long the same problems started to resurface again with disconnection issues continuing unabated through until Sunday, and even into late Monday afternoon.

Complaints By PokerStars Regulars

Since it was purchased by Canadian company Amaya Gaming last year, PokerStars has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism from its thousands of regular grinders. Initial complaints included PokerStars affiliates having their contracts cancelled, rake increases, reduced player benefits, with the seemingly final straw coming after the site broke with 10 years of tradition and introduced casino and gambling orientated games. Although PokerStars has explained why the present difficult iPoker environment has made many of these changes necessary, the site’s reputation has nevertheless diminished in the eyes of its regular grinders since the Amaya Gaming acquisition. Last weekend’s technical issues have only provided further ammunition for those detractors of the new PokerStars management team, especially with thousands of players left frustrated after having had their poker action interrupted.

Suspected DDoS Attack

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks have become an increasingly frequent problem for online poker rooms, and last October and December PartyPoker fell victim to an attack which resulted in events being cancelled and the site going off-line for several hours. Around the same time, 888poker also suffered similar connectivity problems, as hacker’s tried to disrupt the site and wreak as much havoc to its targeted business as possible.

Likewise, around the same time PokerStars was experiencing server problems over last weekend, Betfair was also suffering from similar connectivity issues, but the website was quick to inform its customers as to the cause of its problem. As the Betfair help desk twitter account, stated:

“@Jayk_86 Apologies Jay. We’re currently experiencing a DDOS attack on our site. We’re working to fix this as quickly as possible.”

While DDoS attacks are primarily aimed at disrupting business activities, rather than stealing information, online sites are reluctant to announce such attacks for fear of causing alarm to their customers. Consequently, rumors have been circulating at online forums, such as TwoPlusTwo, that PokerStars had also fallen prey to a similar DDos attack as the one experienced by Betfair.

“Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Stars is being blackmailed with ddos attacks,” wrote online poster amapro.

However, no formal announcement has been forthcoming by PokerStars confirming that the site had been the victim of cyber criminals. In the meantime, forum users have been advising their fellow poker players to remain alert and use as much online security and protection as possible.