partypoker announced new daily Power Series Mega Sats to help players take shots at the big money.

The evolution of the “new partypoker” was dealt a momentary set back this past weekend. The day before the online site was set to kick off their new increased slate of tournament offerings, they suffered a server malfunction in the middle of their Sunday schedule. The malfunction resulted in some tournaments to be paused and others canceled, with refunds for players and damage control for the brand.

partypoker goes ALL-IN

During the first week of March, partypoker announced a massive shift in their online offerings. Starting on Monday, March 5, in addition to the recent unveiling of their new software, the site announced that they would be increasing the guarantees of their weekly schedule from $4 million to $10 million moving forward.

“So, we’re ALL-IN with great new software, a huge $1M Guarantee this Sunday, $10M guaranteed every week, a $20M MILLIONS Online tournament [slated to take place in December] and over $200 in live guarantees! That is a call not only Isildur1 can make. You can too!” partypoker Chairman Mike Sexton wrote on the online site’s blog.

The new tournament schedule, dubbed the Power Series, also comes with a leaderboard promotion that will award over $3 million worth of seats December’s $20 million MILLIONS Online contest.

Experiencing Downtime

Both partypoker and their players were surprised in the middle of the March 4 Sunday schedule when, at roughly 8 pm GMT,  the online site suffered what they said was a “malfunction in one of our series that resulted in the system crashing.”

As players began to flood the partypoker technical support with questions about their tournaments, partypoker quickly took to social media to let their customers know that they were working quickly to fix the problem.

“It was a disaster for us as well as the players, the night of our biggest ever PKO tournaments and on the eve of the launch of our new Power Series.” partypoker’s Managing Director Tom Waters wrote in a statement. “I understand that some players may not immediately return to partypoker given their experiences in the last 24 hours and I expect to see some sizable overlays in the new Power Series MTTs that run from today. We will run the new Power Series as advertised and will not be reducing guarantees.”

Facing It, Heads-Up

The online site wasted no time in responding to support inquiries through social media. Between March 4-5, the site’s Twitter stream was littered with apologies and promises to refund any fees from canceled tournaments within 48-hours. partypoker’s customer service stated that they were tackling the snafu “as a matter of urgency.”

In addition to doing their best to make their customers whole, partypoker is looking to earn another shot at player’s Sunday business. On March 11, partypoker will be adding nearly $2,000,000 to the guarantees to their Power Series schedule.

The increase in cash will be spread out over seven different tournaments on March 11, the bulk of which will be allocated to their $5,200 Super Sunday Big Bounty Hunter Super High Roller which will get a $1 million guaranteed increase, doubling the previous guarantee. The $215 Super Sunday Big Bounty Hunter High Roller will also get an additional $800,000, pushing that guarantee to $1.8 million.

“We can only apologize for ruining what was a huge Sunday for you and us, but please bear with us as we do our best to rectify this situation as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said Waters.

According to partypoker, they have identified and corrected the issue while implementing processes to curb this from happening in the future.