 Betfair orders poker players to return winnings
Betfair orders poker players to return winnings
Last Updated: 1:33am GMT 01/02/2008
Telegraph UK
Betfair is demanding that around 20 online poker players return more than £100,000 in "winnings" after the company became the victim of a late-night sting operation, writes Alistair Osborne.
The betting exchange 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 a 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 twoplustwo.com 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 prizemoney!!!
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! I just wish I had been part of it."
Betfair, which in 2004 switched from the Cryptologic software platform to an in-house system, rectified the glitch after a few hours and stopped large amounts being paid out. While talk that it paid out £4m too much is well wide of the mark, Betfair is pursuing those who profited from the computer error.
In an email, Betfair said: "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."
Betfair declined to comment.  | 
BETCRIS 
02-01-2008, 05:37 AM
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