| Betfair demands poker cheats pay back money after software glitch |
Betfair Poker has sent out an email to online poker players who were overpaid, due to a glitch in their gaming software. The contents of this email are not known, but the company is believed to have requested that any money won by false pretenses, be returned. According to reports in The Telegraph a glitch in Betfair’s payout system was exploited during what was referred to by Osborne as a ‘late-night sting operation’.
Between 20 and 40 online poker players involved in the exploitation that caused the Betfair poker software to payout more winnings then it should have to sit-n-go tournament players.
The glitch which was allegedly discovered on Friday morning, between 3am and 6am, was occurring in ‘certain all-in situations’. Once triggered, several people could win the second place prize in each sit-n-go style tournament.This meant the winner took first prize and the rest of the tournament participants took second, just by going all-in.
No one knows for sure how long the glitch had been allowing players to receive false payouts, but some players suggested they knew for some time that it was there. As players learned of it, they experimented with different variables, testing boundaries and learning what triggered the unearned payouts. Several players involved allegedly increased their stakes, paying bigger buy-ins for bigger prizes, for a better return on their ‘investments’.
One player said; "I'm 19, meant no harm, and saw it as a flaw on their side which may have allowed me to pay for next years tuition."
Once Betfair learned of that something was wrong they immediately suspended play, while they patched up the cause of the software malfunction.
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