Online poker room Betfair Poker (www.betfair.com) is demanding some of its online poker players return $200,000 in winnings that they actually stole.

According to a report in the London Telegraph, a British newspaper, United Kingdom-based Betfair has contacted about 20 of its account holders, accused them of collusion and ordered them to repay the money or face possible legal action.

The players are alleged to have taken advantage of a computer glitch in some tournament games, which led to Betfair making erroneous payments to every participant in certain all-in situations, the Telegraph reported.

The glitch and how to take advantage of it was publicized on various poker posting forums, including TwoPlusTwo.com,=A0 where a poster posted: “The winner got the standard 1st-place prize money. The 2nd-place 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,” the Telegraph reported.

Betfair, which in 2004 switched from using Cryptologic software to an in-house system, rectified the glitch after a few hours and stopped making unearned payouts, but not before almost a quarter of a million dollars walked out the online room door, the Telegraph reported.

The Telegraph obtained a copy of the e-mail Betfair sent to the poker cheaters. In part, it read: “You recently received payments from playing Sit & Go single-table tournaments on Betfair Poker in circumstances that resulted in greater payouts than intended…(the tournaments) 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.”

The Telegraph also reported that when it contacted Betfair for a comment on the incident, Betfair had no comment.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)