Winamax Accidentally Gave Away A Cool Million

It happened in France over one month ago…

It was February 1, 2016 when a French poker amateur had the shock of his life. He opened the Winamax page as he always did to log in to his account when a site message suddenly popped up. The message said:

Not knowing what to believe and obviously looking to clear his mind, he logged off and left for work. On the way, he wanted to make sure that he did read the message right. So he logged back in and looked at his account. The cool one and a half million was still there with Winamax notifying him that he was the lucky winner of a bonus lottery. Talk about luck…

Right off the bat, he started shaking things up. He placed some bets on the sports betting page and moved up the stakes on the virtual green felt. Several days later, he even decided to change his nickname, reset his statistics, and re-start his poker career this time at the limits where his opponents respected his raise.

Fairy Tales Don’t Last Forever You Know…

Unfortunately for the French player, the beautiful dream didn’t last long and soon turned into more of a nightmare. One week later, he noticed he couldn’t log back into his account anymore because Winamax locked it. He sent an e-mail demanding explanations since he knew he did nothing wrong, only won a bonus lottery. The poker room responded immediately saying that the the seven-figure bonus was actually an error on their part and now they demand from the player to give back the €8,900 he withdrew earlier that week. Asking for further clarifications, Winamax sent the following message:

The bonus credited by error was related to a technical error. You are not the winner of a ‘sort of a lottery’ and you didn’t even participate in any such lottery (we can prove it).

We ask you to please give us back the amount as stated in the previous email (€8,900).

Following this, your account will be opened immediately and the equivalent of €1,000 will be graciously paid to your account as compensation problems that were caused to you.";

What Really Happened?

So what really happened? And how can it be that in a one-week span, a player morphed from a €1.5 million winner to an €8,900 in-the-red problem maker?

Well, it seems a Winamax employer made a really big mistake and accidentally put in an ID player number in a real-money box. The lucky one with the unique ID 1546634 was indeed the beneficiary of the one a half million one-week bonus. The employer, according to the Winamax support, should have put the correct ID in the player’s box and 1.82 to the real-money box. Indeed, the French amateur’s account should have actually be credited with €1.82 not €1.5 million. Tiny, innocent mistake? Maybe innocent but definitely NOT tin,y at all as it could cost Winamax a lot more than they initially predicted.

Not Without a Fight!

The employer who did the human mistake may have been fired but Winamax problems are far from being solved.

According to poker site, the player lost an additional €3,000 at the poker tables and in the sports betting section yet what they currently ask is only return the amount the lucky French withdrew aka €8,900. Also, to show their good will, Winamax is prepared to credit the account with an extra €1,000. And on top of it all, the site representative apologized on the public forum user ‘le-requin34’ told his unbelievable story:

Seems like a pretty good bargain right? Well, not for our French amateur. He said on the very same French forum:

He hasn’t paid any an eurocent of the €8,900 in question and has also had a phone conversation with the Winamax support in which he dismissed the human mistake. Our French fighter questioned why was he paid a nine-digit sum and not a seven-digit one (the ID has only seven digits) and why wasn’t he actually paid €1,546,634 - the exact representation of his unique ID. He also said a lawsuit would probably cost Winamax much more than €8,900 they ask from him.

Since that phone call, the French player hasn’t heard from Winamax so he’s now forced to play solely on PokerStars.fr with a much smaller bankroll. We do not know if Winamax will ever reach the player again or if they ever recover their loss back.

What do you think? Did the French player do the right thing? What would you have done differently? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.