PokerStars Pay Huge Spin and Go Refunds

Pete - Sunday, May 8, 2016, Written by- Sunday, May 8, 2016, Online poker

It seems that foul play may be afoot in PokerStars popular Spin and Go single table tournaments after players took to the poker forums to discuss refunds they had been issued, with individual amounts ranging from a few bucks to thousands it seems the problem has been ongoing for some time.

Players were first alerted to the refunds by PokerStars at the end of last month when PokerStars’ Integrity Unit contacted the players via email to say they were due for a refund, because they participated in games that were believed to be in violation of the site’s terms of service. The email contained the following:

"PokerStars has become aware of a situation involving a violation of our Terms of Service, to the potential detriment of other players. You participated in games that were under consideration in this case and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

In a case such as this it is our policy to confiscate the balances of the offender(s) and for PokerStars to add funds where appropriate. This compensation pool is then distributed to players potentially affected in as fair a way as possible.

The integrity of the games at PokerStars is of paramount importance and appropriate action will always be taken when players operate outside the Terms of Service. PokerStars works hard to police the games in order to pro-actively prevent such instances. However, in cases where it is discovered that rules breaches have occurred, the aim is to ensure that any players affected are compensated appropriately."

2+2 forum member Don Stefanello, who plays $60 Spin and Go's revealed that he had received a $1,000 refund and that “1k$ refund means something really big happened, and I wonder how much was I affected, considering that you always get a really small portion of confiscated money from cheaters,” he mused. “It really looks like there might be huge problems that we didn’t see in spins.”

However, no details were released regarding what actually happened or how the games were compromised, as later in the email to the "victims" of the incidents PokerStars stated:

"We regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated. Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or player(s) in question. Suffice to say that the offender(s) have been barred from the site and you will not encounter them again."

As seats in spin and go's are chosen randomly collusion is an unlikely answer to those questions, with the smart money being the possible operation of a bot-ring or the widespread use of recently banned third-party assistance software.