BETFAIR POKER ROW

1 February 2008

20 online players requested to return over GBP 100 000 in unfair winnings



The UK newspaper The Telegraph reports that the online poker division of gambling group Betfair is demanding that around 20 online poker players return more than GBP 100 000 in "winnings" after the company became the victim of a late-night computer glitch.

The newspaper claims that Betfair is pursuing those who profited from the computer error, although the company has not yet commented on the issue.

The Telegraph report claims that Betfair has written to a number of account holders "accusing them of collusion and ordering them to repay the money this week or face possible legal action."

Players are alleged to have taken advantage of an unspecified computer glitch in some tournament games, which led to Betfair making erroneous payments to every participant in "certain all-in situations".

These are where a player stakes all his chips on the outcome of a single hand. The coup has quickly become folklore on poker chat sites, with one participant on the twoplustwo.com message board posting a succinct explanation of what happened:

"The winner got the standard 1st place prize money. The 2nd place person got the 2nd place prize money. And the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th players also got 2nd place prize money!!!," the poster alleged.

"Obviously chaos ensued, with people testing it out again and moving up to the largest stakes possible. They were just all going all-in every hand as they were guaranteed to profit!" he continued.

Betfair apparently rectified the glitch after a few hours and stopped large amounts being paid out. While talk that it paid out GBP 4 million too much is probably well wide of the mark, Betfair is pursuing those who deliberately profited from the computer error.

In an email to one player, Betfair wrote: "You recently received payments from playing Sit & Go STTs [single table tournaments] on Betfair Poker in circumstances that resulted in greater payouts than intended."

Betfair said such games "were incorrectly set up to pay everyone involved in certain all-in situations and this was exploited by you and others to generate substantial returns in a short space of time. As I'm sure you can understand, the winnings received as a result of this exploitation must be returned."

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