And Yet There Are Poker Bots There: Ignition/Bovada Controversy of January 2026

Martin Zamani Exposed a Massive Bot Farm

On January 18th, 2026 the well-known professional poker player Martin Zamani posted a video on X (Twitter) with one of the biggest poker bot farms to catch the community’s attention.

All the laptops and PCs on the video played in one network — PaiWangLuo, also known as Bodog — which includes two poker rooms that are very popular in the USA: Ignition Poker and Bovada Poker.

The existence of this type of bot farms on Ignition/Bovada isn’t all that big of a shocker.

Almost every year over the last decade, poker players regularly share their suspicions and direct evidence of bot infestation there.

However, for the first time the community received confirmation from a respected member, accusing Ignition/Bovada of knowing about problems with bots for a long time and doing nothing to stop them.

So, quite predictably, Martin’s video sparked a wide-ranging discussion among poker players and different rooms.

Incidentally, Ignition eventually released a fairly official statement, calling the video outdated and assuring the community that its team heard player feedback.

Poker Players Aren’t Shocked, They’re Annoyed

A lot of players joined Martin’s comment section to share their anger towards Ignition/Bovada, as well as their stories about reaching out to security teams because of bots without any follow-ups. We’ve chosen a few of these comments as an example of the scale of Ignition/Bovada/Bodog problems from the players’ perspective:

Todd Witteles: To demonstrate how far the Bovada bot problem (and their inaction) goes back…

In the early 2010s, I exposed a long-suspected, obvious bot by playing it heads up and using a software glitch to make the bot take the big blind 80 consecutive hands (something a capable human opponent would never allow).

The operator of the bot sat out after those 80 hands, typed “Fuck off”, and reported me to Bovada/Bodog.

Some obnoxious high level Canadian guy on their security team called me and basically ripped into me for “cheating” and “exploiting a glitch”.  When I explained that I did this in order to expose a well known bot, he claimed there was “no proof” that person was botting.

Never mind the fact that every single regular in the games had already reported it for over a year regarding being an obvious bot, and the account took 80 consecutive BB hands against me and didn’t notice!

They came a hair away from banning me over this, and the bot got to play on as if it were the victim.

Bottom line:  Bovada/Ignition/Bodog has never given a shit if people bot on the site.

Matt Berky: Good to finally be able to show people what’s happening to them (in spite of it having been wildly known and broadcast throughout the community). Perhaps this will be enough to make people think twice before firing off on a Sunday “for reps.” And to those arrogant enough to believe you still have a win rate, I implore you to do some ROI calcs when collusion to cash reaches this scale.

Unexpected Comments from Competitors

The bot-farms-discussion became so hot that even other poker rooms joined it on social media.

However, they did it in such a way as not to call out Ignition/Bovada/Bodog. Instead, they flexed their level of security, anti-bots measures, and the like. Unfortunately for them, not all of their statements were welcomed by players or the topic-starter himself — they mostly just added fuel to the fire.

PokerStars USA Statement

Martin Zamani reacted to this post with a salty response:

However, not everyone was on Martin’s side here. A lot of players support PokerStars, for example Kevin Kennedy wrote:

I got to say there are plenty of reasons to complain about PokerStars but nobody compares to them for security. I used to work in online poker security

CoinPoker Statement

Martin Zamani was sharp-tongued in his response here as well, stating:

Later CoinPoker published following statement to highlight their work against cheaters:

Every operator faces challenges with bots on the platform, and the support of our community is essential in identifying and combating them. Thank you for that!

This week, $156,446 is being refunded to players following the ban of 98 bot accounts and the confiscation of their balances over the past months. 

The funds get redistributed to players affected by this activity.

We sincerely thank the players who supported our security efforts through reports and feedback. Community involvement is a crucial part of maintaining a secure plattform.

We will continue to take action against unfair play, with the clear goal of preserving a fair and transparent environment for all players and making it close to impossible to run a bot on our plattform by the end of Q2 2026.

Thank you for your trust and continued support.

We’ll be producing an in-depth report on this for our newsletter, sharing more details once all refunds are completed.

However, Martin wasn’t impressed at all:

Other players, including Todd Witteles, joined Martin with questions:

1) Nice to hear

2) When will we get full details, including the amount the bots successfully cashed out until caught?

3) Is it a coincidence that you suddenly caught 98 bots one day after the Bovada bot video?

4) You’re still charging $2500 rake on some high stakes tables

Some of the CoinPoker ambassadors rushed to support their employer — for example, Ben Rolle praised the room for sharing real numbers and “not PR talk” (as if other poker websites never do the same).

Moreover, since CoinPoker posts weren’t actually detailed, the room publicly promised to share more details later in their newsletter.

However, as of January 19th, 2026 they haven’t fulfilled this promise yet.

An Update on CoinPoker

After the publication of our article, CoinPoker conducted a further investigation into possible bot account on their site, ultimately banning 98 bot accounts and refunding $156,446 directly to affected players. According to the room, the refunds came directly from the bot accounts went back where they originally belongs. The poker room made all the details public in their newsletter, published January 20th.

ClubWPT Gold Statement

Players reacted rather disinterestedly to this post — perhaps due to recent posts from accounts associated with WPT, which have diminished the seriousness of players’ attitudes towards the brand and its associated entities, at least on social media.