Recently, a Twitch stream showcased a rather obvious bot, a situation that prompted the Winning Poker Network (WPN) and its premiere site, Americas Cardroom (ACR) to institute a reimbursement policy for all the players that have been cheated by bots on the companies’ online poker platforms. While this is a very noble gesture from the Winning Poker Network and Americas Cardroom, it is one of the extremely rare instances where they have publicly addressed the issue of bots which are continuing to become a menace in the online poker space.
The Twitch stream that uncovered the bot mentioned above was that of Eric Collier who was playing in a $16.50 multi-table tournament with a $10,000 guaranteed prize pool on Americas Cardroom. The player made it to the heads-up against a player named FoxRox who was still in good shape despite being behind in chips.
As it turns out, FoxRox was, in fact, a bot and Collier did not notice this at first. However, in the course of the game, the Twitch stream and his viewers became more and more suspicious – this is was mostly because of the fact the FoxRox’s time to act was easily predictable and folded literally every time. Eric Collier eventually won the tournament by just grinding down FoxRox which folded every hand.
In response to this discovery, last Friday, Americas Cardroom tweeted that:
“We are proud to announce the first and only transparent and verifiable reimbursement policy. Taking a stand against bots, we have disabled user FoxRox and refunded 4,001 players for a total of $175,728.80.”
Even though Winning Poker Network and Americas Cardroom have received praise for the move, there are still concerns about whether they will follow through with every instance where bots have inconvenienced players – these add up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars since bots have been active for years.
Podcast Set to Discuss the Bot Problem
With speculations that Winning Poker Network and Americas Cardroom have been dodgy with the issue of bots, Pot-limit Omaha enthusiast Joe Ingram may soon settle a year-long dispute with the latter’s chief executive. Ingram will be hosting Phill Nagy, the CEO of Americas Cardroom on April 29 and one of the main topics of discussion will be the bots that are reportedly swarming Americas Cardroom.
According to Ingram, Americas Cardroom has been known to refuse to eliminate colluding players and bots – he believes that a number of real players often colluded to create unfair games and bots have always flooded the PLO cash games. That is why this podcast is of great importance as both parties are optimistic that it will help in solving the bot problem
