Bookmaker News

Betfair, the British online gaming site based in Malta, has been left red-faced by a bug in its poker software. Several players have managed to withdraw more than £100,000 in dishonestly obtained winnings.

In fact, around twenty or so players took advantage of a software bug affecting the payments for certain sit & go short-handed 6 - player tournaments. The software program paid out more than was normally awarded in the prizepool. Betfair discovered the scheme when the players went all-in on the first hand, whatever their cards.

Betfair corrected the error immediately, but in the meantime, a large number of cash withdrawals had been made via PayPal for an estimated total of more than 2 million dollars. Most of the transactions were frozen, but some slipped through the net.

Nevertheless, Betfair has reminded players that according to Article 9.2 of its terms and conditions, any player that registers to play in its room has to accept the following rule: “If you wrongfully receive any payments resulting from: (a) a human error by our organisation — (b) a computer bug, i.e. the defective behaviour of the program — (c) the inability of the program to operate in accordance with the rules of poker, our organisation will not be able to pay your winnings and you agree to repay any winnings that may have resulted from the aforementioned errors.” However, it’s not certain that this will be enough to persuade the players in question to hand over their winnings.