According to a report by veteran poker industry writer Haley Hintze, a new lawsuit in which 16 HUNL players of Winamax's "Espresso" games are seeking to involve French ARJEL regulators and "could turn a bit messy."

http://www.flushdraw.net/news/a-look...x-bot-lawsuit/

Here's another writeup that was published a few hours after Haley's:

http://www.onlinepoker.net/poker-new...failings/43646

Also, Microgaming Director of Poker Alex Scott has brought the topic of bots/prohibited software to Twitter for public review.

https://twitter.com/AlexScott72o/sta...93330261536768

Here is a recent story that features quotes from Alex Scott and discusses how the company is responding to player feedback.

https://pokerfuse.com/news/live-and-...thanks-player/

Good luck with that

with govt as co-defendent, and Winamax not wanting negative PR of this sort, and the damages being pretty small (in comparison to Winamax business), I'm surprised this did not settle before class action suit.

I'd be even more surprised if it doesn't settle quickly now that action is filed.

unrelated but interesting from Haley article ....

What the what ??

10% for a plantiff atty? Not that I'm a fan of our screwed up plantiff atty industry in the U.S., but Lawyers in France are either doing it wrong or don't like money.

Wow, those lawyers are playing the game wrong. In basically everyway.

Yeah same, don't get why it hasn't settled already, doesn't seem like Winimax is really the "Villain" here -- they recognized the problems with these bot accounts and took action against them. Lawsuit seems to be about "transparency" of the repayment process, and kinda unclear what plaintiff's aims are in the end.

Maybe they think they won't have to do any real work and just want to lock up an easy 5760 euros.

The story was first covered a couple of weeks ago:


https://pokerindustrypro.com/news/ar...-investigation

Thanks for pointing this out. I hadn't noticed the story had already been covered.

LOL twitter...

The primary reason to ban bots is, because they are ****ing bots.

Social media is just a nightmare for PR.

OT but....

Plantiff lawyers working on bot case. Pfff. Bots and those lawyers are equally horrible.

Lawyers in NYC use bots to automatically file plantiff suits when Public Companies file several types of notices with SEC. They have bots that scan SEC filings and auto file lawsuits.

For example public company files notice of acquisition. Next morning they will have 3-6 auto generated emails and auto generated lawsuits from random plantiff atty's with no idea or knowledge of the company, other than they filed a form with SEC.

I have no idea of what French law provides and doubt posters itt do either.

What this sounds like is a claim that Winamax allowed bots to play, that violates either or both of the Winamax terms of service and some gaming law or regulation. Perhaps so....

If so, what is the measure of recovery by these claimants ? Is it
(a) everything they lost or
(b) should it be everything they lost because they were playing a bot or
(c) should it be everything they lost because they were playing a bot unknowingly ?

If some of the claimants were simply playing so poorly it mattered little who their opponent was, do they get a freeroll for their bad play ? (fwiw, I think, yes.)

I am not defending Winamax at all, just curious of what these claimants should recover, if they were tricked into playing against bots because the Winamax terms forbade their opponents from using bots and they, the claimants, relied on that term.

If the terms limit recovery to something less than the aggregate losses, perhaps rake generated, should that stand as a limit ?

Should the gaming regulator be required to reimburse them because it failed to police its licensee ?

I don't think this lawsuit will win as it opens the door for all sites to be sued successfully literally everyday.

^^

I hear you, but I'm not sure that's how lawsuits are decided.

They are decided on based on the prevailing law/statutes and facts of the case... not how or if they impact other stuff.

When you consider that many judges are voted in on term or are appointed for life it opens the door for a personal stake in your own career.

Not saying every case has an agenda but some do.

Yeah, this is about a line in the sand. The site must not allow itself to be held liable for cheating.

A quote I provided elsewhere:

"At its heart, the lawsuit will revolve around the players trying to prove that Winamax should be held liable for the behaviour alleged bot users. No one seems to argue that Winamax approved of the alleged cheating (merely that they failed to stop it soon enough), so this seems like a very ambitious claim to try to make in court. It's analogous to holding the police responsible for the behaviour of criminals."

A pessimist might say Winamax knew exactly what was going on but did nothing because it contributed to massive liquidity in the expresso games.

You could log in at any time and a game would fire immediately even at the 50s - you would be surprised at how many punters would unreg from a sit and go if the delay is above 20 seconds etc.

Further all the leaderboards were on their website - there's no question they were getting piles of emails about the bots.

really?

Of course it's not the same thing. It's analogous.

No one is alleging that Winamax actually did the alleged crime/cheating, right? They're merely claiming that Winamax didn't do enough. Hence, the analogy. In the analogy, the police have (some?) duty of care (subject to sovereign immunity exceptions in a court case, etc). But if you get robbed by some random guy, and you want to make the argument that the police should be held liable, then you've got your work cut out for you.

To make that claim stand up in court, the players need to figure out what is reasonable, and then prove that what Winamax did was not enough. That's a mighty high bar that they've set for themselves.

analogies are typically recursive circles here in NVG land but I'll play along.

If police were getting 20% of the take from the robbers, AND did not use reasonable care to prevent, would you feel differently?

Your analogy prob works better for ARJEL, but if Winamax knew, and did not use reasonable care AND profited from their alleged neglect, then its problem

PTLou,

I agree with that last post of yours. I am just saying that it is very ambitious for the players to be trying to prove all of that. I'm interested in how it plays out. They've set themselves a mighty high bar to clear.
There are a bunch of big "if" statements in that sentence, and that's exactly my point. I think you and I agree on this. If the players can prove all of this, they're going to win.

Trying to prove that "Winamax knew" is going to be tough.

Trying to prove that Winamax "did not use reasonable care" is going to be tough.

Trying to prove that Winamax "profited" is probably the least hard of the three, but even this is not a slam dunk.

For example, to prove this, they've got to:
a) show what reasonable care is
b) show what Winamax did
c) show that b is not a reasonable approximation of (a)


Now, it's possible that the players have tracked down one of the 5-10 poker bot detection experts in the world, and might be able to use their expertise to build a case around (a). I think that's mighty unlikely.

It's also possible that the players have some inside knowledge of what Winamax does (or doesn't) do to detect bots. I think that's mighty unlikely.

Then, they've gotta combat Winamax's experts to show that Winamax was behaving in an unreasonable way.

I would be awfully surprised if the players have the ability to do all of this.

got it. I was just confused with police analogy and thinking I was missing something.

Totally agree with all you say, in that salient point here is burden of proof for players which will be a complicated path forward.

I don't know how lawsuits work in France, but for example here in 'murica, first step will be discovery where Plantiff atty can create a mountain load of work for Winamax requiring them to produce all internal emails, documents pertaining to internal controls, security procedures, documentation on all their relevant technology/software, depositions with Winamax execs and employees. So, Winamax will have to deal with that internal focus suck, in addition to hiring outside litigation counsel (not cheap).

Other than the fear of setting a precedent, it would be much cheaper for Winamax to just pay them off, regardless of merits of case. That's the fundamental flaw with plaintiff law.

Again surprised Winamax didn't settle this before filing of suit (while also requiring NDA from plaintiffs)

In the UK, Australia, and some other nations, the losing party is required to pay the legal fees of the winning side. This dissuades a huge amount of speculative law suits that might take place in the USA (where the loser paying the winner's fees is much rarer).

I don't know how it works in France. Any French legal experts able to inform us? Google searches didn't reveal much to me.