Betfair have demanded that about twenty of its online poker players should return their winnings after the betting firm became the victim of a late-night sting operation.

Betfair have written to the players alleging them of collusion and demanding that they return their winnings this week, or face the threat of possible court action.

The twenty or so players are thought to have taken advantage of a computer glitch in some of the tournament games, resulting in Betfair making erroneous payment to the players in certain “all-in situations.”

All-in situations are when a player gambles all his chips on a single hand.  On a poker chat site one of the players who played in one of the games explained, “The winner got the standard 1st place prize money.

The 2nd placed person got the 2nd place prize money.  And the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th players also got 2nd place prize money!!!  Obviously chaos ensued, with people testing it out again and moving up to the largest stakes possible.  They were just all going all-in every hand as they were guaranteed to profit!  I just wish I had been part of it.”

Betfair switched from the CryptoLogic software to an in-house platform in 2004, which seems to have had a glitch allowing the large payouts to happen.  The glitch was dealt with after a few hours to stop large sums of cash being paid out.  There have been rumours that as much as £4 million was paid out, although this figure is likely to be largely exaggerated.  However, the payouts are large enough for Betfair to order those who gained from the computer glitch to pay back their winnings.

Betfair have sent emails to the players stating that, “You recently received payments from playing Sit & Go STTs [single table tournaments] on Betfair poker in circumstances that resulted in greater payouts than intended.”

The email continues that such games “were incorrectly set up to pay everyone involved in certain all-in situations and this was exploited by you and others to generate substantial returns in a short space of time.  As I’m sure you can understand, the winnings received as a result of this exploitation must be returned.”