Six players sue Winamax over poker bots
Claimants seeking €10,000 to €50,000 after losing money to allegedly illegally-operating bots
Six French poker players are suing Winamax over allegations the company “failed to protect the integrity of its gaming operations” by not doing enough to prevent deployment of poker bots on its site.
An external investigation by poker player Maxime Lemaitre alleged that two players had been using bots, software that plays automatically on the company’s Sit-N-Go games.
In June, Lemaitre published his findings on the clubpoker.net forums page under the username BatMax, prompting Winamax to suspend both accounts.
All three players were playing the Sit-N-Go “espresso”, fast games for three people, with a maximum stake of €250 per player.
As part of Winamax’s inquiries, the players, usernames VictoriaMo and Twopandas, were invited to play poker at the Winamax headquarters in Paris, for a two-day period, with only VictoriaMo agreeing to do so. Following a month-long internal investigation by Winamax, VictoriaMo was found to be innocent, while TwoPandas was guilty.
Under Winamax site rules, players are barred from using applications, including bots, “automated to advise, take actions or make decisions on behalf of the player.”
Winamax, therefore, agreed to compensate affected players, however, according to the lawsuit, the proposed compensation was “incomprehensible and derisory, considering the sums involved”.
A subsequent request by the affected players to confirm how the compensation was calculated was denied by Winamax claiming it could not “provide the details of this control transaction and the associated offsets due to our privacy policy.”
In the case of VictoriaMo, the lawsuit alleges that Winamax has failed to provide any details of their investigation despite numerous requests being made by the players.
Under French, law operators serve as debtors to players, having a legal obligation to guarantee the integrity and transparency of gaming operations (Article 3 of Law No. 2010-476 of May 12, 2010, on the opening to competition and regulation of the online gambling industry).
The lawsuit alleges that Winamax failed to do so by allowing TwoPandas to continue to operate on the Winamax site with the bot software.
Players are now suing Winamax for compensation of between €10,000 to €50,000 and are being supported by a further 16 players, who have all registered to be a part of the lawsuit.
At the time of publication, no comment was received by EGR from Winamax surrounding the lawsuit.