Unfair Advantage Policy

bwin.party is committed to taking all reasonable measures, and to do soimmediately to prevent anything that either diminishes the fun you have playingon the site, or that gives another player an unfair advantage over you when youplay against them.

To this end, bwin.party forbids all unfair practices (including the use ofcertain types of online poker-related programs). We do this to protect ourcustomers and the integrity of the bwin.party system.

Unfair practices are any practice (including but not limited to the use of BOTs, AI, multiple account use and/or practices conducted in collaboration with other players) carried out by one or more players, with one or more accounts which could put any other player not engaging in such activity at a competitive disadvantage where the unfairness in such activity is due to its success being based to some extent on concealment and/or deception against such players. One way of thinking about this is to consider whether a group of peers, when presented with information about the practice, would overwhelmingly consider that practice to be unfair.

No, definitely not. Our own website provides programs for playing online. Our objective however, is in providing and promoting a level playing-field and the best possible user-experience for all of our Players.

Programs that give a player an advantage over others are not something we wish to forbid. Advantage is not the issue— an unfair advantage is and we see that as deception. And so is invasion of privacy and data theft.

To begin with, our basis for distinction is not whether a particular program gives the user an advantage over non-using players, nor is it based on the particular content.

To us, the key indicia that define the class of programs we seek to eliminate from use on the Site are: deception and breach of our customers' privacy.

Nevertheless, what our customers want will always remain the primary influence on what we do about this. So for instance, we have no doubt that anything that compromises the integrity of the game or that erodes our customers' confidence about whether they will be unfairly disadvantaged while playing on our site, must be eliminated. And it's there that we direct our efforts. But our customers will always have the last word about what it is they want to play and against whom. So if our customers want to play against BOTS, then we will seriously consider this request. But again, the bottom line is that we will do whatever it takes to ensure that our customers are not deceived and that their privacy is not violated.

Instead, what we're talking about here are programs which: (i) advertise as a key feature that the buyer/user will gain an unfair advantage (quite often they even use the word “cheat”) over the other players—in other words, they promise to help a player to cheat; or (ii) their use by the buyer/user is intended to remain concealed from the other players and from the “operator” (i.e., the online gaming room); or (iii) steal legally protected material (e.g., player identities) that violate International Copyright Laws as well as Privacy Laws.

Granted some of the companies who make programs that we deem “forbidden” (i.e., that satisfies the criteria above) claim that the purpose of their programs is not to assist a player to cheat an online game but rather as a training aid (even though they might concede that an unscrupulous user could indeed use it for the purpose of cheating). Think for a moment about this claim. What other plausible reason is there to make and sell programs promised to give you an unfair advantage and at the same time remain concealed from the other players and the online room, and actually take the place of a player at the online table but in a way undetectable by anyone else. That aside, emphasizing one attribute to advertise their programs (“to cheat”) but disavowing that attribute entirely in every other instance is dishonest, to say the least, and certainly does nothing to help the image of our industry.

So if these companies who make such claims were honest they would disable the functionality that allows use of the program to be concealed—since doing so would not compromise its claimed value.

Our efforts can be divided into three separate categories: (i) identification & detection; (ii) warning/suspending offending users; and (iii) additional measures through enlarged customer choice.

Identification and detection counter-measures are in-place now and have been for some time. These efforts will continue to improve - so that we're able to more precisely detect existing BOTS, but more importantly so that as new BOTS are created/released, we can also prevent those from eroding the experience when on the website.

The use of certain programs and their websites on the bwin.party system areblocked outright. These are: WinHoldem, Holdem Memory, PokerAndroid,PokerBot plus, PokerEdge, Poker Prophecy, Poker Sherlock, PokerBot Pro, SnowieBackgammon, JellyFish Backgammon, BGBlitz, 3DFibs and GNUBackgammon.

Once identified, a player using programs in this Forbidden Category willusually be notified. In that notice, we explain what we believe this player isdoing and what steps we will take if he does not stop doing it immediately. Inthe most extreme cases we are prepared to suspend their Account andconfiscate the funds in that Account without prior notice.

Yes—and indeed we want you to know that we do this and what particular datawe're looking for and also why we need to. Perhaps the best way to explain thisis by contrast to the most well-known form of data mining—i.e., what Google,Yahoo, AOL, and others like them are doing—gathering data about the user for(among other reasons) purely commercial purposes (i.e., to sell a user profileto online advertisers). Now consider what we do. Our automated software reportson any processes or programs running on your computer that have been identifiedas prohibited software falling within our policy. We do not scan your harddrive or take screen shots from your machine. The very limited data that isprovided to us is used only to query player's computers while they're playingat our tables, solely for the purpose of detecting use of the offending type ofsoftware we're talking about here. This type of monitoring remains one of thekey counter-measures against the abuses caused by BOTS which we believe areagainst the interests of our players. To find out more about our general policywith regard to data processing, please see our Privacy Policy.

Where bwin.party in its absolute discretion determines an unfair practicehas taken place (whether an advantage has been gained or not) the person orpersons responsible for that practice will face one or all of the followingconsequences:

• bwin.party may email the offender(s) and demand the immediate cessation ofall unfair practices;
• bwin.party may suspend the offending account(s) for the purposes ofconducting a thorough investigation into the unfair practices'
• Ultimately, we reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate theoffending account(s) indefinitely and for all funds in the account(s) to beforfeited (see section 5, 19, and 21 of our Terms and Conditions of Use)

bwin.party

Last revised 19 July 2006