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Last January, GGPoker, the largest online poker room in the world, announced its upcoming launch in the Czech Republic thanks to a newly obtained license via a partnership with King’s slots.
Now, GGPoker has kickstarted the new year with less fortunate news. Namely, the online poker room has issued an apology to its players as a result of an incident involving a “superuser” who managed to exploit a weakness in their software and use it to cheat opponents and cash out thousands of dollars.
User MoneyTaker69, Banned from GGPoker
According to the official statement issued last Friday, GGPoker explained that the player with the username “MoneyTaker69” has been banned from the online platform.
The poker giant also stated that the player’s “unfair winnings” which equated to close to $29,800, would be fully redistributed to those players who had fallen victims to the cheater.
MoneyTaker69 managed to deduce all-in equity through the exploration of a client-side data leak vector. While he was not able to see all of his opponents’ hole cards, he gained an idea of the percentage probability of winning every hand, even though he was not aware of the exact hole cards of the rest of the players.
GGPoker has reassured players that they were able to remedy the vulnerability since the incident.
The company has issued sincere apologies for the incident, which they described as having caused numerous players to feel concerned about the integrity of the game.
The scandal, which has also shaken many players’ trust in the poker platform, has been taken “very seriously” by the poker room which is determined to keep working hard and not disappoint its members in the future.
The company also announced they were recruiting new staff members for their technical security crew in an attempt to double its size while enlisting help from reputable security professionals to make sure “online poker is safer than ever.”
Not MoneyTaker69’s First Mention on Poker Forums
GGPoker explained its security team was the first to identify a series of “unusual game patterns” which further triggered the investigation aimed at MoneyTaker69.
However, the TwoPlusTwo internet forums dedicated to poker players were the first to comment on the player for having allegedly won 90 big blinds per 100 hands over 8,900 hands while engaged at a gameplay rate of 53% voluntarily put money in pot.
Simply put, the player had been on an almost impossibly large winning streak sample size of hands while proving a suboptimal preflop strategy.
According to users from the same forum, MoneyTaker69 also won a multi-table tournament for close to $47,600 while using an “extremely volatile strategy, which aroused a lot of suspicion.”
The GGPoker platform stated they would reconcile the payout for the tournaments affected by the player, along with the victims of the cash game.
The company also acknowledged the online poker community’s “hive minds” and constructive feedback that provided them with the confidence they needed to fix the problem.
