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Americas Cardoom Press Release – San Jose, Costa Rica – September 16th, 2015 – In the world of poker, putting your money where your mouth is means everything. Americas Cardroom has certainly taken that to heart as evidenced this past weekend during its Million Dollar Sunday. When faced with an overlay of more than $200,000 and an onslaught of DDOS attacks, Americas Cardroom navigated players through the connection issues and to the final table where the 1st place prize of $200,000 was waiting.

“DDOS has recently impacted online businesses everywhere including Sony, Microsoft and even governments,” noted Phil Nagy, CEO of the Winning Poker Network. “DDOS does not seem to be going away anytime soon. In the current landscape it’s all about how well you mitigate and manage the attack.”

DDOS stands for Distribution Denial of Service. In a nutshell, it’s a digital attack where multiple people attempt to hinder traffic to a particular web server. DDOS attacks have plagued numerous poker sites, however most of Americas Cardroom’s competitors classify them under “connection issues”.

A recent blog post by the IT staff at Americas Cardroom shed more light into the attack:

We did our best to combat the attacks that day and fought for hours to keep it going.  Unfortunately, with some players more affected than others, it would have been unfair to all who played to continue.  We were forced to cancel the tournament and refund all the buy-ins, and live to fight another day.

 

Well, that day came this past Sunday.  Once again, as soon as the tournament began, so did the attacks.  Our attackers had contacted us previous to the tournament asking for a ransom pay-off to keep them at bay.  We refused to pay and put the fate of the tournament in the hands of our DDoS mitigation team who had been working on upgrades and preventative measures all year long.

 

The decision to continue with the Million Dollar Sunday in the face of Sunday’s DDOS attacks demonstrates that Americas Cardroom is committed to pleasing players and sticking to their promises. Not only did Americas Cardroom keep the tournament going, but they’ve also committed to hosting a $1 million guarantee every Sunday in October. Experts note that many online poker rooms would opt to cancel big guarantees when faced with these types of attacks.

Americas Cardroom first experienced a DDOS attack when it hosted its first Million Dollar Sunday last December. While they made the decision to cancel that tournament, the online poker site has since hosted several $1 million guaranteed tournaments without issue.

Since the last DDOS attack, Americas Cardroom has put together a team dedicated to dealing with it head on. The backend system now includes a feature that allows the tournament director to pause the tournament and resume it as soon as players are reconnected, usually taking just a few minutes.

Sunday’s tournament featured an overlay of $225,500, in large part due to the connection issues. As players were faced with a slower-than-normal tournament, many who would normally rebuy or re-enter chose not to, providing those players who chose to stay in with a better shot of finishing in the money thanks to a smaller field.

The next Million Dollar Sunday gets underway on Sunday, October 4th and features the same $1 million guarantee. Americas Cardroom is hosting a Million Dollar Sunday every weekend in October, putting an additional $4 million in guaranteed prize money on the line.

“Obviously a huge overlay is not something we want to be faced with on the Monday morning after a Million Dollar Sunday,” noted Nagy. “But if I had to choose between disappointing our accounting team or angering our players, I’d choose facing the wrath of the guys in the office every single time. Our players expect us to stick to our word and we’re doing that. The show must, and will, go on.”