WPN Vows All Out War On Poker Bots

Earlier this month, a thread which appeared on the 2+2 forums caused quite a stir after its author, a poster known as “themadbotter”, described how a bot he had programmed was able to win $30,000 over a six month period playing on the Winning Poker Network (WPN). After another 2+2 member claimed to know his identity, “themadbotter” soon professed to have made up the whole story and subsequently vanished like a proverbial puff of smoke.

The controversy the story created, on the other hand, did not, especially with the “themadbotter” asserting that poker bots represented the “best type of customers” for poker networks, which he said then turned a blind eye to their activities. As he wrote:

“They play a lot of volume, fill up the tables, and pay rake; they wait patiently for deposits/withdrawals; they never complain or pepper support with e-mails.”

Consequently, WPN CEO Phil Nagy has now announced that he would be waging a war on the poker bots that polluted the online environment, whilst warning that “there would be casualties.” Nagy even suggested that there is likely to be some collateral damage during his purge, with some real people likely to be mistaken for bots and subsequently banned. Nevertheless, Nagy insisted that it was necessary to be merciless, and do all that was possible to clamp down on the proliferation of this type of cheating, which has done so much to damage the reputation of the online game.

The declaration of all out war on bots, however, also succeeded in getting the attention of none other than themadbotter himself, who took the announcement to be some kind of challenge. As he then wrote on the 2+2 thread:

“ACR [America’s Card Room] CEO was on Twitch earlier and promised that at the end of the month, the site will become very bot-unfriendly; that botters will no longer be able to operate with complete impunity. Challenge..”