Why Players Are Unhappy When Poker Rooms Refund Money After Banning Cheaters

Credited Amounts Are Tiny

While a few players manage to get hundreds of dollars from the room, the majority receives bits and pieces, which may feel like an unfair compensation for being cheated. This is especially true when credits come from the poker room phrased something like “the most severe breaches of our Security & Ecology Agreement”.

The lack of clarity about precise amounts of confiscated funds also doesn’t help if the room states “we make every effort to ensure that” these credits “are distributed equitably”.

People see the last word and mistake it with “equally”, so they naturally become upset when their accounts are credited with just a change while others get much larger numbers.

From the Cambridge Dictionary

• Equitably means “in a way that treats everyone fairly and in the same way”.
• Equally means “in equal amounts”.

Players’ disappointment in both cases is triggered not only by wording but also by unmet expectations in regards to punishing cheaters and compensating the victims. 

Scheme of Refunds Distribution Isn’t Clear

People always want more but their demands grow significantly if they can’t know how credit refunded to their account are calculated.

Why precisely this amount? How can I check that this is fair compensation? Why should I believe the room’s assurances now if I know that I was cheated in this room?

All these questions remain unanswered in most cases. And even if the room answers — as it happened with the superuser named “MoneyTaker69” on GGPoker — exceptions only prove the rule for people who already suspect the room to be unfair, secretive or unjust.

The reason for such a perception is actually tied to the way the room handles cheaters. In the “MoneyTaker69” case, it were players who spotted the cheater, studied them, exposed the winnings and sent all the avidence to the GG.

In this spotlight, poker players simply don’t have the luxury to rely on what the room reports for cheaters without crucial details such as the amounts of confiscated funds and their nicknames.

Cheaters Remain Undisclosed

This issue is the biggest on the list.

If the room has proof of someone cheating — seriously enough to confiscate their balance and issue a ban based on the evidence — its employees being “not at liberty to disclose the specific players involved in this case” may seem suspicious.

This approach makes players wonder:

• What if these cheaters do not exist and the room just gives away pennies to create an illusion of taking action against cheaters?
• What if they are affiliated somehow with the room?
• What if they aren’t banned and continue to play?

And even if all things initially stated by the room are true — how can the poker community verify them?

Moreover: this poker room is cleared of these cheaters from now — but what about other rooms? Yes, you can’t share personal information of players with other companies — but nicknames are already publicly visible in the room, so you can just warn other rooms and the community about the actions of this individual.

And if the room as an organization for some undisclosed reasons can’t do even that — there are no laws and regulations to prevent it from sharing what exactly the cheaters did to be banned.

Poker rooms don’t make this information public without actually giving us a good reasons — we can only assume that they are afraid to damage their reputation by admitting that someone found a specific way to cheat there.

But from the point of plain logic, concealment of this information looks more damaging than its disclosure any day. And we already have a very loud precedent — just look at GGPoker’s traffic that hasn’t changed since the release of detailed information about MoneyTaker69.