Does Ignition Poker have bots?
Yes, at least once. In January 2026 Ignition confirmed that the accounts in a viral bot-farm clip from 2022 had been deleted, and its Terms of Use ban robot software outright. Nobody outside the company knows how many bots are playing today: Ignition publishes no ban counts and hides opponents' identities at every table. I did not run my bench on Ignition, so there are no win rates here. This page is the written record as I read it on 10 October 2026.
The short answer, with the limits
The Terms of Use prohibit bots and promise to forfeit the whole balance of an account found using one. And after a clip of an alleged bot farm went around in January, Ignition confirmed that the footage was old and that the accounts in it were gone. Neither statement gives a bot count for any month after 2022, and I would not trust anyone who quotes one. Forum guesses are not data.
My own testing is on PPPoker, as the methodology page explains. Ignition is a US-facing real-money room with its own client, so none of those results transfer. Opening a bankroll there to find out would be a months-long, risky project, and I have not done it.
Two clauses, two different penalties
The Terms of Use carry "Latest update: January 3rd, 2024". The page redirects visitors from restricted regions to a login screen, but the full text of the terms sits in the page payload, and that is what I read. Bots turn up in two separate places, and the penalties are not the same.
| Clause | What it says | Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| 6.3 | All actions must be executed by players through the supplied interface. Ignition will take "any measures necessary" so that robot software or programs designed to simulate real player play "will be detected and prevented from accessing the Website". | Account review and possible termination. If Ignition determines an account is employing such software, it is disabled and all balances, "both deposits and any winnings", are forfeited. |
| 13.3(a) | No robot software, external player assistance programs ("EPA Programs") or anything else that gives an unfair advantage. EPA covers software and also databases or profiles such as websites and subscription services. Gathering information about other players beyond your own observation of play counts as unfair. | Ignition may close accounts and void winnings if it establishes the use of an EPA Program. |
| 13.7 | Continuous monitoring and examination of play "by both manual and automated means". | Players who violate the collusion rules in 13.4 are banned for life. The sentence sits in the collusion section, not the bot section. |
The different penalties matter when sizing a bankroll. A HUD or a tracker falls under 13.3, which speaks of voiding winnings. A bot falls under 6.3, which takes deposits too. The bot clause is written for the worst case, so a ban costs the entire balance.
Bovada's terms use almost the same words, which I quoted on the Bovada page. In Bovada's version the bot sentence is numbered 6.4. GamblingNews says the two rooms share a player pool.
What anonymous tables do and do not say
Ignition's own page calls the room "for players looking to put skill to the test, not robotic play using the best software money can buy", and sells anonymous tables mostly as protection from HUD users. Opponents get a number in place of a user ID.
Tournaments are the exception. The page says players keep the same number throughout one tournament, so you can track an opponent across hands within that event. Cash games give no such link, and the page does not say how often a cash-game number changes. A player can spot odd behaviour inside a single tournament, but cannot build a long record on one account across weeks. On ACR, the public catches I could document came from regulars doing exactly that kind of tracking.
I do not read anonymity as proof of anything about bots. It removes outside evidence in both directions.
What the operator has actually said
Around 17 to 18 January 2026, poker pro Martin Zamani posted a clip that appeared to show rooms of computers running tables on Ignition and Bovada through VPNs. He said he had not made the video and did not run the bots. Per GamblingNews, Ignition answered on Tuesday 20 January: the footage dates from 2022, every account shown has been deleted, more accounts found in the review were removed, and the company "does not tolerate cheating". It asked players to report suspicious activity.
The statement supports that a large farm existed on the network at least once and that Ignition removed accounts. It does not say when, how or how many. Players also asked whether people hurt by the 2022 botting got refunds. According to GamblingNews, the statement did not address that. Zamani's later hint of around 100 bots in a 2024 Bovada tournament came with a screenshot but no verification I could find, so I file it as an allegation.
What other rooms put in writing
In the same news cycle, GamblingNews quoted two other operators with specifics:
| Operator | What it published |
|---|---|
| CoinPoker | Banned 98 bot accounts and returned more than $156,000 to affected players. |
| PokerStars (US) | Describes an integrity team of 60 specialists using purpose-built software against collusion, multi-accounting and prohibited software. |
| Ignition | Accounts from 2022 footage deleted; no counts, no dates for the removals, no figure on refunds. |
These are statements from the operators, relayed by a news site, and I have not audited any of them. For Ignition I searched for a similar press release, a regulator action or a blog post with enforcement statistics on 10 October 2026 and found none. That means "Ignition catches most bots" and "Ignition misses many" are both unverifiable from outside.
What this means for bot evaluation
- Price a ban at the full balance. Clause 6.3 forfeits deposits. If a vendor's FAQ talks about "losing winnings", it is describing the milder EPA clause.
- Ask for a dated Ignition build. A product listing the room without showing when support was last confirmed has not demonstrated that support. My criteria page lists what I ask a vendor for.
- Treat a clean record as unknown. Anonymous tables and no published statistics mean absence of catches tells you nothing.
- Discount any promise of invisibility. The rules say the operator intends to detect bots, and the 2026 episode shows it did remove accounts. Claims of being undetectable are marketing.
FAQ
Does Ignition allow bots? No. Clause 6.3 of the Terms of Use prohibits robot software, and 13.3 prohibits external assistance programs and player databases.
What happens if Ignition decides you used a bot? The account is disabled and all balances, deposits included, are forfeited. The decision is at Ignition's reasonable discretion.
Are there bots on Ignition right now? Unknown. The operator confirmed removals of 2022 accounts and has published no later figures.
Is Ignition the same as Bovada? They share a player pool and near-identical wording on bots, but I treat them as two pages because the evidence is different. See the Bovada record.
Did you test a bot on Ignition? No. My bench is PPPoker. This page reviews published rules and statements.
Sources
- Ignition Casino, Terms of Use, "Latest update: January 3rd, 2024", clauses 6.3, 13.3, 13.4 and 13.7, read 10 October 2026.
- Ignition Casino, "Anonymous Poker Tables" page, read 10 October 2026.
- GamblingNews, "Ignition Clarifies: Viral Bot Farm Video Is From 2022", 22 January 2026.
More: the full comparison is on the homepage; the sister US-facing room is covered in the Bovada record; the forum view is in six Reddit threads, read.