It came to light recently that a player was awarded a pot with the worst hand, over at Cake Poker. The revelation was revealed on the 2+2 forums – where a player with a king high flush beat an ace high flush. While it was amusing that the first few posters on that thread didn’t even spot the winning hand, online poker software should spot it. We take it for granted that a poker site will award the pot to the best hand. These kinds of mistakes aren’t meant to happen, but as anyone with a computer will know – they do some strange things sometimes.
Software has bugs, and this was clearly a bug in their system. Such a mistake is obviously not great PR for an online poker room (“don’t play there; they don’t know what beats what!” etc). But depending on how you handle the situation, you can either turn it into a huge issue or limit the damage. Cake Poker should be applauded in the way they dealt with this situation. The poker room manager at Cake Poker, Lee Jones, quickly responded to say that it was indeed a genuine mistake, and a short time later came up with a detailed explanation – which is entirely plausible and while I’m no programmer, I’ve no reason to doubt them.
Compare this to Ultimate Bet, where a similar situation occurred. This involved none other than Phil Hellmuth, who won with the worst hand. How did they respond? Well, the opposite to Cake Poker. Of course that’s no surprise to anyone who knows anything about Ultimate Bet – a site with zero integrity and one that should be avoided at all costs (Google ‘Super User’ for more on them).
So, credit where credit is due. Well done Lee Jones. Well done Cake Poker!
I also read in another blog how a player spotted a programming bug on one online poker site. The story is that one player was able to fold even if he wasn’t dealt because he missed the blinds. Because of this the best hand didn’t win due to the bug. It was dealt with accordingly afterwards, before things got worse.
Software companies will try to make their products bug free but mistakes can happen. Let’s just be happy that the bug was spotted immediately before things got out of hand!
well, obviously you can’t stop this from happening esp if it involves money.. the money is so hot that no matter what it takes, some people will play tricks and cheat not thinking of the consequences.. so, let’s just be cautious about it.
Cheaters take the fun away from playing. You play to enjoy the game!
Its good that these websites implement strict security measures. Unscrupulous people will always find ways of hacking a system especially when money is involved.