Exactly right on the sob stories. Like I said in my last post, there are many ways to check GMT time besides the timer, although I have always found the timer to be correct except when left un-refreshed for inordinate periods of time.
The problem is that people just didn't know that the site timer can be inaccurate if not regularly refreshed. The fact that the timer drifts over time wasn't discussed in public until AFTER the game had already started. They (some of them, at least) tried to follow the rules by waiting for that timer to hit zero and ended up getting burned by the fact that it had drifted.
I managed to get my bets placed in time but I knew about the drifting from observing the timer discrepancy on the first day; it had been 10 to 15 seconds off for me. This time, I just watched the blockchain timestamps.