Alleged botters were in the spotlight this week as French poker site Winamax suspended two accounts, inviting the players behind them to visit their offices in Paris to play a live session to prove their innocence…
Suspicions and complaints about the two accounts – ‘twopandas’ and ‘VictoriaMo’ have been rife over the past two years, playing on the Winamax Expresso SitNGo tables, with French poker forums, in particular Club Poker, discussing the unbelievably high rakeback of both accounts, as well as the eerily-similar stats produced during play.
The English-language 2+2 forum may be an easier one to follow for non-French speakers – one poster ‘concerned pro’ explaining…
“…they are grinding 8 tables for about 6-8 hours a day. Over 250 games every single day which is pretty hard to do. no one can 8 table and achieve that high a winrate. its close to impossible”.
He added:
“However the same 4 winners come from the same poker house. and all have similar stats. and 3 of them were terrible before. 2saintpandas aka mrplayboy was garbage 6 months ago. now all of a sudden he’s an 8table machine”.
The site itself has cleared the pair once previously, a Winamax rep stating:
"Players have usual game statistics and a 'GTO score' in their zone. The reaction times are similar and the movements of the mouse correspond to the game actions”.
Neverthless, the complaints and suspicions have continued, the pair confirmed as having raked massive amounts during the past year, although not generally ‘winners’ at the Expresso tables themselves, the Winamax representative sharing the following information on the two accounts:
- VictoriaMo - "a gain of -18k at the tables and a total rakeback of 246k is a net gain of 228k since August 2017"
- twopandas - "a gain of +11k at the tables and a rakeback of 455k is a net gain of 466k euros since October 2016".
It will be interesting to see whether the players behind the accounts take Winamax up on the offer of a live session, although it is unclear how much of their massive earnings are still actually on the site at the moment – a factor which will likely determine whether they visit Paris to prove their innocence or not.