Partypoker has recently released its monthly update on its efforts to make the site’s gaming experience safe and fair for all players. According to the monthly report, the online poker operator shut down a total of 121 fraudulent accounts in July and in the process, it recovered a whopping $175,000 in funds. It has been more than 8 months since the company pledged to find and remove all illegal bot accounts that had begun to invade the site and in that period it has made some strides towards ridding the site of online poker bots. The criteria they use to determine which sites should be removed is pretty straightforward and is based on account activity monitoring.
“The poker room continues to invest in resources aimed at safeguarding the safety of its players, spearheaded by a specialist Poker Fraud Team comprising a collection of former poker professionals whose duty is to investigate suspicious activity and aid partypoker in ridding the site of unscrupulous accounts,” the operator’s representatives said during a recent press release.
In the first months of its bot account witch-hunt, the online poker operator has shut down a total of 601 fraudulent accounts and seized over $1 million in funds – the recovered funds are returned to customers who may have been victims of the bot accounts.
July was one of the special months for the company’s efforts since the number of accounts closed exceeded the monthly averages and it also accounted for the second biggest number of accounts closed by partypoker. The amount of funds recovered was also the third-largest amount retrieved in the last eight months.
Of the 121 fraudulent accounts that partypoker closed, 89 of them were using the .COM version of the site while the remaining 32 were operating on the .EU website. This time, the EU accounts, despite being the smaller portion of the accounts that were closed, accounted for most of the funds that were received. $98,070 was retrieved from the .EU accounts while the .COM sites accounted for the remaining $76,267.
Other Changes
The bot account witch-hunt aside, July also saw the announcement of other changes by the online poker operator. Some of these changes were very controversial especially because of concerns that they would hamper efforts by players when it comes to detecting bot accounts themselves. Changes included the removal of Heads-up Displays (HUDs) as well as a requirement that all players using the platform change their screen names. While partypoker has been working towards alleviating the concerns surrounding these changes, there is still a lot that needs to be done before everyone gets on board.
All in all, the initiative is welcome since, needless to say, a safer and more trusted online poker gaming environment will definitely go a long way in attracting more customers and improving many other aspects of the industry.
