The Eastern Poker Tour’s $30K Championships was being held Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 28th and 29th) at the Pembroke Country Club. You know that I had spent the whole month preparing. (Catch up EPTs $30K ChampionsTournament and PokaPaloma Prepares for EPTs $30K Championship and August Eastern Poker Tour Season Standing)
Friday afternoon, I rushed home from York Beach Maine in order to do a laundry, and then go to the hotel I had reserved in Rockland MA for Friday and Saturday nights. I reserved a hotel room so that I would be fresh and awake for the long, all-day sessions I anticipated for Saturday and Sunday. The Pembroke Country Club is about 1.5 hours from my town. My thought was that I had worked hard to give myself every advantage in playing these tournaments. I didn’t want to put myself at a disadvantage by fatiguing myself by getting up extra early or by driving the 1.5 hours back and forth…or getting stuck in the Saturday morning summertime traffic heading toward the Cape…and returning home at who knows what time of day. There was no way of knowing what time we would reach the winning 10 – or – you would bust out. The EPT had e-mailed out and posted (on its website) “stern” rules about arriving on time and registering for the events. I had worked too hard to have any fluke accidents…hence the hotel.
While I was waiting for the laundry, I decided to catch up on my e-mails. Unbelievably, there was an e-mail from the EPT that had been sent Friday afternoon at 1:22pm announcing the cancellation of the $30K Championships tournament.
I checked the website and found this…
CHAMPIONSHIP POSTPONED TO FUTURE DATE
08-27-2001 01:48:00pmPlease note, this weekend’s event is pushed back to a later date.
We will post on the website and email out the details on the future event.
NEW SEASON AND NEW POINTS START SUNDAY: ALL PLAYERS WHO QUALIFIED FOR THIS SEASON’S CHAMPIONSHIP WILL REMAIN IN THEIR CURRENT STANDING.
Any questions shoot us a phone call (401) 529-4572 or an email.
So What’s my beef?
First of all, the subject of the email is SO ambiguous: IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING THIS WEEKEND: TOC/POINTS TOURNAMENTS. If you have ever played in a tournament, you are expecting the Rules & Regulations…and guess what the subjects of those of emails are? “IMPORTANT INFORMATION REAGARDING”… It is highly likely that this email was mistaken by some players for the standard Rules & Regs email and deleted without reading or simply ignored.
Second of all, the TIME OF DAY that the e-mail was sent (1:22PM) and the notice was posted on the website (1:48PM) is incredulous to me. 1:22PM and 1:48PM the day before the tournaments are about to start…less than 24 hours before? Who in the world was online on a Friday afternoon in the late Summer? And if they were on line…Who in the world would be able to cancel their hotel reservations in time? I didn’t even get to read the email until after 6:00pm Friday. IF I could have modified my hotel reservations, it was already too late to cancel Friday because the hotel Check In started two hours earlier.
Also incredulous is the total lack of respect for the very people who put money in Glenn’s (Eastern Poker Tour’s owner Glenn McCory) pocket week-in and week-out. And I’m not talking about 4 or 5 players. There were about 800 players expected to play this weekend. The absolute ARROGANCE of the organization to wait so long to make the cancellation accouncement is midboggling. As if all any of their loyal players had to do on a Friday afternoon in the Summer - was to read emails from the EPT or read the EPT blog? I’m thinking John McEnroe – “You can not be serious!”
The ARROGANCE of putting a note in same announcement – in CAPS and UNDERLINED (capitalized and bolded, I suppose because it is the most important piece of the announcement) that the new season begins Sunday… totally blowing off the cancellation notice. So let me get this straight. Is Glenn saying…
“We just screwed you getting every last dollar out of you while you played liked maniacs this month in order to maintain and improve your rankings – and we are announcing in capital letters and bold that we want you to give us more of your money starting this Sunday.”
How f’in stupid does Glenn think the players are? The donkey that is the Eastern Poker Tour Headquarters surely needs a lesson in how to treat customers.
The cowardice demonstrated by McCory in having someone named Gretel – whom I’ve never received an e-mail from before but I think I saw a picture of in one of the highlights – deliver the bad news. (I hope Gretel wakes up some day to understand how she was used in this drama that Glenn created.) Glenn has his own e-mail and has used it in corresponding in the past (Glenn McCrory [glenn@easternpokertour.com]). One curious thing I have noticed over the last 3 -4 months is that looking at the website, Glenn’s involvement is less and less evident. His contact information has been removed and he is hiding behind his franchise owners and employees.
And, where was the Eastern Poker Tour employee or rep Saturday morning? Did the organization send someone to the Pembroke Country Club to greet players and explain? to apologize?
Ahhh, that would a “NO”. I was there and no one representing the Eastern Poker Tour was there. I’ll tell you more about what I learned tomorrow… And what about the franchise owners who are the ones who are going to lose from here on out… what do they have to say?
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Im glad im not the only one sick of EPT’s lack of professionalism…I once grinded out a 3-4 hour EPT tournament and finished in 2ND only for them to tell me they didnt have my cash on them!! These people make a killing and i have to CHASE MY MONEY?! Another time i finished in 1st..i was supposed to get a prize jacket for winning only they never had it in my size,so for the next 3 or 4 tournaments i made a point to tell the guy running the event “hey you got my jacket yet” and each and every time the guy would tell me “no”,with no sense of giving a damn or making me feel like he would make it a priority to get me one and i still havent seen it.And yes now this postponement with no consideration for anyone playing it…plus they have the nerve to leave a contact number for questions that isnt even in service!!
Hey Geirge –
I totally agree, so unprofessional. I checked the website today and kept getting JavaScript errors on most of the “ranking” screens.
Checked my rank for the Framingham region for August – because last I looked I qualified for the August Championships. Somehow today, I don’t qualify.
I am frustrated that the Championships have not been announced yet. Hoping Glenn can keep his stated promise to give us 3-weeks notice on the new location.
yeah im seriously starting to wonder if this tournament will ever happen at all…heres to hoping
Hi [PokaPaloma] and Geirge,
I understand your gripes as we were also floored by the phone call from the Pemroke Country Club at 10:30 AM telling us “I just can’t have the event, it is a PR nightmare for us… the chief does not want the event to happen and I have to do business in this town” This was (even though we supplied him with more than enough legal proof of the legalities of our events) and the remaining 2 hours was spent calling the police station non-stop with our attorney also calling to no answer. Then 12 PM we decided it was disaster time.
First we called the hotel we recommended to everyone to make sure they would honor refunds to tall the players. They were not happy as it was a loss in 40+ rooms but because of the circumstance they helped us out and made sure to refund everyone.
Then with the help of Gretel and 6 other managers and employees we went on personally calling every single player of the 1,400 list of players that qualified in day 1a and day1b. Players who did not give us their phone information were emailed… as you received… Players who did not give us either would have to rely on word of mouth or our facebook posts. For me to personally call and email everyone would have take 3 days… as you can see that wouldn’t make sense now would it??
I can see the phone call now:
“Hey guys.. ya know that championship yesterday… it was cancelled, sorry I didn’t get around to calling you sooner… but I wanted to personally call everyone”
All in all, it was a terrible situation the town put us in. A situation we had not had to suffer once in 13 championships. I was more than happy to see that 90% of our customers understood as bad as it stinks to have to wait on the championship, nobody was put into a more terrible predicament than EPT. I was even more pleased to find out only 30 of the 1400 players that were expected to play in the event missed our notice.
Now to the next season notice… it obviously is necessary to continue tournaments despite the horrendous circumstance we were put in. We must move on and continue with next season. All our venues rely on us to continue to host events; all our employees, sub-contractors, and franchisees count on EPT events to pay their bills, and the players enjoy playing them… why would we just pack up and stop hosting events because the Championship had to be post-poned???
In conclusion, despite it all, the championship will go on and will be announce once we have the town’s permit in hand. Players that truly know us and the circumstance, know that nobody wanted the event to go on more than us.
Lets all move on and get excited for the fact that EPT is the only company in the U.S. that gives its pub poker players a shot at a $30K payout on TV TWICE A YEAR.
Geirge, or whatever your real name is.
What number are you calling? All our numbers are very much in service and we even give out cell phone information of every local manager if you happen to have any immediate needs. All that information can easily be found on: http://www.easternpokertour.com/_p/contact/default/
As for the website rankings. We have used this ranking system for 5 years and I have never once found an issue with the point’s accumulation. Your javascript errors might mean you need to update your JavaScript on your computer… our web administrator is very thorough and we are always checking the site for glitches and all our rankings work great on all web browsers.
As for chasing your money and/or jackets. I am not sure where this could have been? All our managers pay players their prizes right away so unless there was some extraneous circumstance you should have been paid that night. There could have been an issue with the jacket… we did run out of some sizes and the turn around is 30+ days on each order as they are made-to-order. Your manager should have been more helpful, and if you contact me personally I would be happy to talk to him on that.