One of the chief reasons for PokerStars’ perch above the online poker world is that they are such a reliable company. Unfortunately, this reliability was put in some serious jeopardy after the software crashed last night.

The PokerStars software stopped working around 18:30 ET, and the nearly 50,000 players online were puzzled about what to do. At first, people may have thought that it was a mere glitch; but when the PokerStars software was still down a half hour later, people began to grow antsy.

In fact, many players were scrambling on the internet to find out what was going on. Luckily, PokerStars officials released a statement on their site to explain the problem and it read:

Administrator: All tournaments have been paused while we attempt to resolve the issue affecting gameplay. Tournaments will resume as soon as possible. When we are ready to resume, we will post a 5-minute warning before doing so.

Unfortunately, the software crash was not without consequences because many poker tournament players completely lost their position and buy-in. This being said, we’re still awaiting word on when/if those affected by the software problems will get their money back.

As for the cause of PokerStars software problem, it’s been attributed to an overload of players on the site. Currently, the 2011 WCOOP is going on and there are a ton of people in the WCOOP tournaments. So when you combine this with the 20k-30k cash game players who are usually on PokerStars, you can get a picture on why the software had problems.

If there’s any silver lining to all of this, it’s that PokerStars has been able to retain a huge player base despite dealing with the US Department of Justice earlier in the year, and US players no longer being accepted.