PokerStars Struck By Massive Server Issues

April 13th, 2015 | by Brian Corlisse

PokerStars' servers affected by major issues.

Players frozen out as PokerStars’ servers are hit by unexpected technical problems. (Image: Guardian.com/Alamy)

PokerStars might be the largest online poker site in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s immune to server difficulties.

Despite investing millions of dollars in the latest computing technology, many players were plunged into poker darkness over the weekend as the servers encountered some unexpected issues.

Although PokerStars has an excellent track record when it comes to server reliability and security, the problems, which started on Friday evening, appear to have affected players across Europe for at least three days.

The technical glitch initially caused major lag and time out issues for players before PokerStars’ tech team decided to force a server restart.

The move caused tournaments to be rolled back and cash games to be paused while the system reset itself.

The Off/ On Trick Doesn’t Work

After waiting for the lights to turn themselves back on, the problem appeared to be resolved and Lee Jones took a moment to inform the community that a full schedule of games was back in operation.

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

Unfortunately, the problems soon resurfaced and continued through until Sunday with players complaining of frequent disconnection issues.

These complaints were backed up by various messages from the official PokerStars Twitter account alerting players about further shuttered games.

The last official message regarding the server problems came in the early hours of Sunday morning when a PokerStars rep announced that a full schedule of MTTs would be available, but the team was still working on some issues.

“We are still working through the recent technical issues, but all our regular Sunday games are available. Thank you,” PokerStars’ Twitter rep tweeted.

However, despite the site’s best efforts, the initial problems appear to still be bubbling away under the surface.

Forum messages from users as late as Monday afternoon have showed that players are still finding it difficult to connect to the platform and play without timing out.

Possible Attack on PokerStars?

As grinders try to work out the cause of the issue, some have speculated that the problems may be the result of a DDoS (Denial-of-Service) attack.

These attacks usually occur when a rogue Internet user decides to flood a company’s server with thousands of requests, overwhelming it to the point of meltdown.

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

Although PokerStars hasn’t confirmed this is the case, it could be the reason why the site is experiencing continued problems, despite the best efforts of the tech team.

Despite PokerStars being seen as one of the safest sites in the world, this climate of fear could be linked to recent reports of player’s accounts being hacked.

In a thread entitled “Many PokerStars Accounts Hacked”, Acrana details how his account was hacked recently and that it was part of a larger series of attacks in recent weeks.

At present there haven’t been any formal announcements by PokerStars as to whether or not the site has been targeted by cyber criminals.

However, forum users are urging players to remain vigilant and use as many layers of protection as possible.