Joined: Jan '11
Location: Germany
Age: 50 (M)
Posts: 513
Many poker players on PokerStars, the world's largest real-money online poker room, received refunds to their accounts as a result of playing against opponents in lottery-style Spin & Go tournaments who were violating the site's terms of service.
Although no details were provided for which games and opponents created the issue to begin with, those refunded received the following message via email from the PokerStars Game Integrity Team, notifying them about the refund, how to see the amount, and the importance of the site's integrity.
"Hello,
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.
To confirm your credit, please log onto your PokerStars account, go to the 'Cashier' screen and click the 'History' button. Your share will be shown as "REFUND", followed by the amount of the credit.
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.
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.
Thank you for your continued play at PokerStars. Please let us know if we can help you with any further issues or questions.
Joined: Feb '12
Location: Canada
Age: 64 (M)
Posts: 6036
... < Ya,....wtf is going on with this Amaya thing...? It's based in Montreal and is giving Canada a bad name...! They've even cheaped out on the PSO Scratch n Match thingy too...
... < ...Hey pinotte,...you're close by there,...go knock on their door and slap somebody up side the head...!
Joined: Jun '13
Location: Canada
Age: 80 (M)
Posts: 3700
I am winning at least one tickets a week and have never won anything whit those.
What are the prize on the tournaments 4 or some 9 tickets for another tourney with many players like i said never won in the fist one. I am now thinking of just forget about them.
I am just losing my time on them.
have you ever won with them.
------------ I am winning at least one tickets a week and have never won anything whit those.
What are the prize on the tournaments 4 or some 9 tickets for another tourney with many players like i said never won in the fist one. I am now thinking of just forget about them.
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
well well well... it seems that any news that pokerstars name is mentioned is a bad one, or a rigged one, or a fcuked one... stars are in a freeride to obscurity it seems, one day there will be only kim jong un, drunk pochui and 100k+ of bots playing there. fcukin sad...
Joined: Feb '14
Location: Tunisia
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 2135
lottery-style Spin & Go ? aint all players in Spin n go are dependent more on luck 500 chips with super turbo format against 3 players i have seen all kind of hands go all in from 7-3 to A-A and how you determine that a player is a lottery player ?
Joined: Jan '10
Location: Indonesia
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 1875
Posted by Skpmorita: lottery-style Spin & Go ? aint all players in Spin n go are dependent more on luck 500 chips with super turbo format against 3 players i have seen all kind of hands go all in from 7-3 to A-A and how you determine that a player is a lottery player ?
Yes, like slot machine !! you will win if you sit on winning chair . And the jackpot is b******t! I played $0.25 and max just got $1.5 once after play more than 20 times. So why they refund some money to big losing player, lol.
Posted by pochui: well well well... it seems that any news that pokerstars name is mentioned is a bad one, or a rigged one, or a fcuked one... stars are in a freeride to obscurity it seems, one day there will be only kim jong un, drunk pochui and 100k+ of bots playing there. fcukin sad...
This might surprise you but i think those bots are already playing there. Just like the fcuking stock exchange - one computer putting sums into another computers pocket with shorting some obscure $hit meanwhile the third computer laundering this profit clean on an off-shore account in the Bahamas.
Joined: Feb '14
Location: Canada
Age: 37 (M)
Posts: 11
How many times I have lost near the bubble with pocket Aces or Kings at Stars, and actually began folding them as a rule if stack was of a decent size. So many times started out great and was sucked in with what I call the double reversed full house, were some guy goes all in with low unsuited cards and ends up beating my full house on the river. Really need to be suspicious of that kind of play late in a game unless they already know the outcome. Happens way too often to be chance or bad luck.
------------ No luck whatsoever with Star, yet I do know someone who did win a lot at the $8.80. Always thought that the client side updates, that updated every time I started the software., were not all the same for everyone. That would answer a lot of my suspicions about the site.
Joined: Feb '09
Location: Finland
Age: 33 (M)
Posts: 224
Posted by Serpang:
Posted by Skpmorita: lottery-style Spin & Go ? aint all players in Spin n go are dependent more on luck 500 chips with super turbo format against 3 players i have seen all kind of hands go all in from 7-3 to A-A and how you determine that a player is a lottery player ?
Yes, like slot machine !! you will win if you sit on winning chair . And the jackpot is b******t! I played $0.25 and max just got $1.5 once after play more than 20 times. So why they refund some money to big losing player, lol.
20 games and you got a 6x, you might consider yourself as lucky
Joined: May '08
Location: Germany
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 6786
The spin and go format looks very vulnerable to bots to me. So it would be no surprise if this was the issue here. Stars as the biggest room will be the first target for all those that try their "luck" this way.
Joined: Feb '09
Location: Finland
Age: 33 (M)
Posts: 224
Posted by shokaku: The spin and go format looks very vulnerable to bots to me. So it would be no surprise if this was the issue here. Stars as the biggest room will be the first target for all those that try their "luck" this way.
Of course, but atleast they are doing something about it. Heard that even normal people got blocked for investigation that were playing in a stable. So guess there is also the bot ones that got busted
Joined: Oct '12
Location: Ukraine
Age: 58 (M)
Posts: 296
Hi, everybody. Such impression that all poker ruma have very much strengthened security measures though check also those players, which old and reliable. But all this doesn't exclude fraud.
Joined: Aug '10
Location: Germany
Age: 52 (M)
Posts: 2219
I like the spin & go sng´s at stars but the variance their are verry crazy. But gratz for all players who get an refund, i think the better way was the chance to buy a suckout protection at the vip shop
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
I wonder what happened in these games. Guess we will never know. Good thing you got money back though. In other sites they just dont care. Bots? What are they? Are there really bots in poker? Pretty easy answer here, since it was ipoker skins, mentioning about their existence at some point, in their TOS
Joined: Feb '09
Location: Finland
Age: 33 (M)
Posts: 224
Posted by DaCapo71: I like the spin & go sng's at stars but the variance their are verry crazy. But gratz for all players who get an refund, i think the better way was the chance to buy a suckout protection at the vip shop
True that.. Very high variance game, but if you put decent volume and got a good chipev which takes down the variance, its possible Have been playing a lot of spins lately, so far doing better then the EV so cant complain, until I can
Joined: May '09
Location: Croatia
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 20493
Pokerstars was great site before,but know they are doing strange things with this changes on poker games,casino and betting!they even changed loyalty program,that was much better before,especially about FPP!
Joined: Mar '14
Location: Japan
Age: 50 (M)
Posts: 8946
Spin & Go? Isn't Spin & Go three-handed single table tournament where players are randomly seated? So, this issue is unlikely related to collusion among players. Could it be a bot ring? It could also be down to transgressions by players using recently banned third-party assistance software. Well, we will probably never know.
Joined: Feb '09
Location: Finland
Age: 33 (M)
Posts: 224
Posted by dule-vu: Pokerstars was great site before,but know they are doing strange things with this changes on poker games,casino and betting!they even changed loyalty program,that was much better before,especially about FPP!
VIP loyalty or whatever you can call it, didnt change that much for players that are not playing that much. Only for platinum and supernova that the changes affected the most and in a bad way. Casino and betting have no idea about those.
Joined: Nov '14
Location: Macedonia, The former Yugoslav Republic of
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 1169
So what new??? I guess nothing, still the sinking ship is taking on water, and goes even deeper... I seriously at this point believe some1 has already installed backdoor on their server, and who knows what else... Its not enough their greed we have to put up with on daily basis, talking bout the rake, and the changes with the points, which the latter doesn't effect me at all, but we all saw pro`s protesting it, now bots run wild there, whats next...playing against AI???
< Ya,....wtf is going on with this Amaya thing...? It's based in Montreal and is giving Canada a bad name...! They've even cheaped out on the PSO 
