$25 Golden Bounty Ticket Disappeared After Unregistering Before Tournament Start – Support Says “Expired”

Hello everyone, I’d like to share a situation I had with wptglobal.com⁠� and see if anyone has experienced something similar.
I won a “$25 Golden Bounty” ticket through a Facebook promotion. On May 17, I registered for the tournament scheduled in my region at 8:30 PM. Before the tournament started, I accidentally unregistered because I wanted to switch to another tournament.
The problem is that after unregistering, the ticket completely disappeared from my account even though the tournament had not started yet and the ticket was still within the valid dates.
I immediately contacted support on May 17. They told me to wait while they checked the situation. Later, I received a reply saying that the ticket had “expired.” However, this does not really make sense to me because:
the tournament in my region was on May 17 at 8:30 PM,
everything happened before the tournament started,
and support initially told me to wait instead of saying right away that the ticket was expired.
I’m not trying to create problems, I just want to recover a ticket that I won fairly and that disappeared after an accidental unregister before the tournament even began.
Has anyone here experienced something similar with promotional tickets or unregistering before a tournament starts?

The game you unregistered from was probably the one opportunity to use the ticket.

G0930 said:

The game you unregistered from was probably the one opportunity to use the ticket.

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I respect their decision, but I disagree with how this was handled. If a ticket is still showing as available and allows registration, it shouldn’t already be considered expired in the backend without any warning. That’s just confusing for the player.

The $25 Golden Bounty is a weekly flagship event on WTP Global. So perhaps the expiration date of the ticket was before the next one a week later, meaning it could only be used for this weeks edition as already suggested? This would not be super unusual for a promotional ticket. One might say, that if the ticket is only valid for one tournament, why dont they just enter the player directly into that tournament rather than issue a ticket?

But maybe this is just, how their system works, and it also give players the option to late register, if they dont want to play the tournament from the beginning. Regardless you started with nothing and ended with the same nothing, so I think, its time to let this one go and move on. Just consider it another kind of "bad beat", which as we all know, poker is full of

fundiver199 said:

The $25 Golden Bounty is a weekly flagship event on WTP Global. So perhaps the expiration date of the ticket was before the next one a week later, meaning it could only be used for this weeks edition as already suggested? This would not be super unusual for a promotional ticket. One might say, that if the ticket is only valid for one tournament, why dont they just enter the player directly into that tournament rather than issue a ticket?

But maybe this is just, how their system works, and it also give players the option to late register, if they dont want to play the tournament from the beginning. Regardless you started with nothing and ended with the same nothing, so I think, its time to let this one go and move on. Just consider it another kind of "bad beat", which as we all know, poker is full of

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I get what you mean, and I understand your point.
It’s true that promotional tickets often come with specific conditions and expiration rules tied to particular weekly events. In that sense, it might simply be how their system is designed, and not necessarily something unusual in online poker platforms.
That being said, the main issue here is the lack of clarity and consistency around what actually happens when you unregister. If the ticket disappears as a direct result of that action, it really should be clearly explained beforehand to avoid any confusion or mixed expectations.
So I agree with you that it’s probably not something personal or targeted, just a system limitation. But at the same time, it’s also understandable why someone in that situation would feel it wasn’t fully transparent.
In the end, yeah, it’s probably best to move on from it — just hopefully they improve how these situations are communicated in the future.

Bakti213 said:

That being said, the main issue here is the lack of clarity and consistency around what actually happens when you unregister.

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Just guessing now, but if the ticket is only valid for that particular event, then maybe the system think, that since you unregister, you decided to not play the tournament due to a lack of time etc. And thats why the ticket is not transferred back to your account for later use, as a general $25 ticket won through a satellite would be. So basically you can then register late, but if you register ahead of the tournament start, you will not be able to change this decision.

Bakti213 said:

If the ticket disappears as a direct result of that action, it really should be clearly explained beforehand to avoid any confusion or mixed expectations.

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Yeah there could be a warning, that your ticket will be forfeited, if you unregister, and a question like "are you sure" requiring a confirmative click. But as I understand it, WPT Global does not have the best software, so maybe thats just part of the experience of playing there. And then you need to decide, if bad software is compensated by soft games or good rewards. For me the choise is easy, as they do not offer their services in Sweden

Just to make you feel better, here is another funny misclick "bad beat" story. Due to regulatory requirements the swedish version of the PokerStars client has a "panic button" in the main lobby called 24 hour break. I once hit that button by mistake while trying to register for another SnG, and without any kind of warning or confirmation I was then logged out of the client and unable to log back in for the next 24 hours.

Which was kind of inconvenient to say the least, since I was already playing 4 other SnGs with a total buyin of $40, where I was now forced to sit out and get blinded away. After my 24-hour "cool-down" period ended, they send me an email asking, if everything was fine, and how was my experience with their responsible gambling program? I replied, that I was fine and explained, what had happened, and that this was not particularly helpfull