OAK LEADERBOARD | Late But Good!

OAK Leaderboard has finally returned! For those unfamiliar with the promotion, it awarded prizes to the best players of our internal tournaments every 3 months. The basic concept will remain similar, but we've made some improvements to make it more exciting, and importantly, more valuable too...

Question: When does it start?
Answer: It's already started! All scheduled tournaments in February are counting, except the monthly €1k Guarantee and the freeroll satellite postponed from last month.

Question: How are players ranked?
Answer: It's a very easy system. Your score will simply be the amount of money you've won (in the case of satellite tournaments, the value of the tournament entries will be used. For instance, winning a €10k Guarantee ticket in a freeroll satellite would add €75 to your score.)

Question: Which tournaments will be included?
Answer: All internal OAK tournaments will count with the exception of the monthly Guarantee tournaments. Starting from March, a number of regularly scheduled network tournaments will be added as well. The added tournaments will match the number of internal OAK tournaments and be closely scheduled for convenience. The maximum buyin for any included network tournament will be set to €25. Example: OAK Freeroll Satellite (21:00) + €8k Guarantee (20:20) on Wednesday, March 3rd.

Question: What can I win?
Answer: There will be prizes every month, every 3 months, as well as a yearly Grand Finale:

Every month
1: €100
2: €50
3: €25
4: €10

Every 3 months
1: €450
2: €200
3: €100
4: €50
5: €25
6: €15
7: €10

Every year:
The top 9 ranked players by December, 1st get to participate in a special end-of-the-year €2000 freeroll. If the player qualifies through other means, he will be credited with extra chips in the tournament instead. Finally, the top 9 players will receive a small headstart for next year's leaderboard based on their position and receive special OAK status with increased forum privileges.

Question: How do I keep track of the schedule and my scores?
Answer: There will be a dedicated OAK Leaderboard page where you can find schedules and payout dates, as well as easily flip between 1-month, 3-month, and yearly scores. The page will be published before March 1st along with the scheduled network tournaments that will accompany our internal OAK tournaments.

Note about the early schedule: February and March will count as one month (payout April, 10th.) The first 3-month period will be February-May (payout June, 10th.) Following periods will be 1 month / 3 months and payouts always on the 10th the following month.

Question: You announced earlier that highly ranked players in last year's leaderboard would get an advantage. How will that work?
Answer: Your score on the leaderboard will be multiplied with two and converted to €. For instance, if you had 50 points, you will get €100 added to your score.

EXTRA OFFERS | VIP Challenge, €2k Freeroll

We'd like to offer our sincere apologies for being later than promised in announcing the details of the leaderboard and the extended bubble guarantee; it's been an extremely busy month for your poor site administrator!

So... we decided to come up with a few extra bonus offers as a compensation:

€2k Guarantee freeroll: This tournament will replace next month's €1k Guarantee freeroll, offering you twice the value while keeping the 500 VIP point requirement. There will be a few additional ways to qualify as well, such as...

VIP Challenge (Feb. 23rd - 28th): All players making 200 VIP points or more in this period will be qualified and automatically registered for the €2k Guarantee tournament. The top 5 ranked players will get to start the tournament with more chips than the rest of the field: 1st (4500), 2nd (4000), 3rd (3750), 4th (3500), 5th (3250). In addition, the top 10 ranked players will be credited €50 to their OAK Leaderboard score.

Rankings will be posted on February 24th, 26th and 27th. The winners will be announced on March, 1st.

1 VIP Qualifiers: For the lowrollers there will be 3 seats available to the €2k Guarantee tournament through a series of qualifying satellites. More details will be published later on, or you can just look for the tournaments to show up under "Special" in the tournament lobby of the client.

RESPONSIBLE GAMBLING | Avoid The Pitfalls, Plea For Help

Poker is fundamentally a game of skill, but there is obviously an element of gambling to the game as well, with its set of assorted risks. This is doubly true if the player fails to stick to proper bankroll management since it magnifies the short term luck factor, and the increased risk of ruin will often influence decision making on the tables in a negative direction, thus compounding the problem further. Worse, the player might get tempted to chase his losses and play beyond his means. We're now talking about compulsive gambling, a very serious problem.

Unfortunately, we have a player that fell into this trap hard, digging herself into a hole she's having trouble climbing out from. She has chosen to out herself and her problem; you'll know her as @mamma_mu from the tables. She's gambled away all her available funds and is currently at risk of getting kicked out of her apartment since she's not able to pay her rent.

For a number of reasons, I would normally never do this, but since I happen to know this player personally, I offered her some help of my own and promised to ask OAK for help as well if she outed herself and her problem to have full openness about it.

She's about €600 short of making her rent. If you're interested in helping out, then please don't make any direct transfers. I think it's important to make this as transparent as possible, so a forum thread on OAK will be created where @mamma_mu will participate herself and we'll figure out the best way to proceed from there. Feel free to respond directly to this mail for questions or suggestions.

Some additional information:

- I'm aware that this is a bit of an imposition. Don't feel you have any obligation to help. Help if you want to help.

- She requested that we set her monthly deposit limit to €50, which we naturally fixed for her. If you feel you're having similar problems, please don't hesitate to contact us to get a fixed limit yourself.

- For some additional reading about responsible gambling, please visit the Responsible Gambling section of LGA (Mets Poker is licensed by LGA) and read the articles and documents contained in it.

- If you feel you're having a problem, feel free to contact me if you want to talk about it, but don't expect any fund raising. This is a one time happening due to the special circumstances and the fact that I know the player well enough to know that it's not an attempt at exploitation.

Best regards,

GrimFandango | Administrator
One Of A Kind (www.oneak.net)
webmaster@oneak.net