AcePoker Terms of Service
DRAFT — not yet reviewed by counsel. Written 2026-09-03 to close legal item L-05 (no terms exist); updated 2026-09-04: Route E markers struck after PR #515. Every section marked [counsel] needs a lawyer's eye before this is linked from the site. Every statement marked [not yet built] describes a rule that has been decided but is not yet implemented in the product; it must be built or struck before publication. Until this document is linked, it binds nobody.
Effective date: to be set when published.
1. What AcePoker is
AcePoker (acepoker.io, and the Agent Arena at arena.acepoker.io) is a play-money poker site. Gold Coins have no cash value, cannot be redeemed, transferred, or sold, and are not a prize. Nothing on AcePoker pays out money.
Some tables are populated by house-operated bots. They are run by AcePoker, they hold play-money only, and they exist so that there is always a game. Where a seat is a bot, the site will say so. [counsel: L-18 disclosure wording]
If a feature ever offers a purchase, a subscription, or a promotional currency, the terms for it are in section 6.
2. Your account
- You must be 18 or older to create an account, and old enough to play poker for play-money where you live. [counsel: minimum age by jurisdiction; today the site collects no age at signup]
- One person, one account. You may not share an account or let anyone else use yours.
- You are responsible for keeping your password private. We may verify your email address before you can play.
- We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms (section 5). We do not currently offer self-service account deletion; write to the support address in section 9 and we will delete your account and its data, subject to section 7.
3. Playing fairly
You agree not to:
- use software to play on your behalf at any human table (bots are welcome only in the Agent Arena, section 4);
- share hole cards, coordinate play, soft-play, chip-dump, or otherwise act together with another player against the rest of the table;
- exploit a bug rather than report it;
- harass other players in chat;
- do anything that interferes with the game server or other players' connections.
Play-money that is won or moved through any of the above may be removed, and the hands may be struck from any record or ranking.
4. The Agent Arena
The Agent Arena is a competition for computer programs ("agents") written and run by you ("the operator"). It runs on its own server and database, separate from the main site. Arena chips are Gold Coins held by an arena-only account that cannot log in to the main site, cannot be redeemed, and holds nothing of value.
Registering and running an agent
- An operator is a verified AcePoker account. An operator may register up to five agents, and each agent may hold up to five live API keys.
- A key is shown once. You are responsible for anything done with it. You may revoke a key at any time and the revocation is immediate.
- The protocol, rate limits, and table rules are published in the arena documentation, which forms part of these terms for arena play.
Fair play between agents
- Agents owned by the same operator may enter the same season. Today the arena will not seat two agents of one operator at the same table or in the same mirror match; that rule may be relaxed. [decision pending: Alex has asked for same-owner agents to be allowed at one table; the live rule still refuses it] No agent may help or benefit another agent in any way outside the normal rules of poker, whether or not they share an owner. Sharing hole cards, coordinating actions, soft-playing, chip-dumping, and signalling between agents are collusion.
- AcePoker records every hand dealt in the arena, and records for each agent connection the API key used, the network address, the client software identifier, and the connection time. This is used to review fair play. [counsel: GDPR basis and retention statement — see section 7]
- Findings of collusion are handled under section 5. A finding applies to the operator, and all of that operator's agents.
What AcePoker may do with arena play
- Hand histories and game records from the arena, including those of your agents, may be used by AcePoker to improve its own bots, its products, and the arena itself. You keep all rights to your agent's code; AcePoker never receives it.
- Results, rankings, and the operator display name you choose are public.
Prizes
- The arena does not charge an entry fee and does not pay cash prizes from entry fees. If a sponsored prize is ever offered, it is awarded to the agent's author for skill in programming, eligibility is free, and the sponsor's own rules apply. [counsel: L-24]
5. Suspension, strikes, and appeal
Breaches of section 3 or section 4 are handled on a ladder, applied to the account (or, in the arena, the operator):
| Finding | First | Second | Third | Fourth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minor (a pattern that could be poor play as easily as cooperation) | Warning | One-week suspension | Season suspension | Ban |
| Major (anything that could only be done by two parties acting together, such as sharing hole cards, chip-dumping, or whipsawing; or bot play at a human table) | Season suspension | Ban |
In every case, the hands and match results named in the finding are struck from any ranking. [not yet built: identifying the affected hands is manual — an admin lists every tainted hand/match id when filing the finding; nothing auto-voids] A suspended operator is shown as "suspended" on any public ranking, without a reason. A banned operator may appeal once, in writing, to the support address in section 9; appeals are read by a person; a second appeal is refused as a matter of policy, not by the system. [not yet built: no appeal counter exists] [not yet built: removal of chips won through the breach — a finding strikes the hands and match results from every ranking, but no chip balance is adjusted on a cash felt; and the ladder tooling exists for arena operators only, so a section 3 breach on the main site is still handled by hand]
AcePoker may also suspend or close an account for behaviour not listed here where that is reasonably necessary to protect other players or the service.
6. Purchases, memberships, and promotional currency
[counsel: this whole section. Membership is live via Stripe with zero subscribers; gold purchase and sweeps are switched off and must stay off until the items below are resolved (L-01, L-03, L-16, L-21, L-31).]
- Membership. A paid membership is a subscription to site features. It gives no advantage in a hand. It does change what the site gives you outside a hand: a larger daily-login Gold Coin reward and eligibility for member-only Gold Coin Races. It renews until cancelled; you may cancel at any time and keep the features until the end of the paid period. Refunds are at AcePoker's discretion; a refunded period ends the features. [counsel: refund and chargeback policy; today a refund does not claw back coins already credited]
- Gold Coin purchases (when offered). Gold Coins are play-money and cannot be redeemed. Purchases will not be available to residents of Washington State. [counsel: the WA exclusion is a floor, not a ceiling; the state list is L-16/L-21.] [not yet built: gold checkout is switched off and no billing-address or state check exists; both must exist before it is switched on]
- Promotional sweepstakes currency. Not offered. If it is ever offered, it will be under separate rules that replace this paragraph. [counsel: do not enable without the state list, AMOE design, and age gate — L-16, L-17, L-03]
- Chargebacks. A chargeback on a purchase removes what it bought and may close the account.
7. Your data
- We store your email, username, password hash, play history, and, if you declare it, your date of birth. If you complete identity verification we store the documents you upload. [counsel: privacy policy is a separate document and is required before any purchase — L-05]
- We use your data to run the game, keep it fair, contact you about your account, and improve the service. We do not sell it.
- Arena connection records (section 4) are kept for the season and 90 days after it, then archived for fair-play review and product improvement. [not yet built: no retention job or archive exists; rows are kept indefinitely until it does]
- You may ask for a copy of your data or its deletion at the support address in section 9. We will comply subject to what we must keep to resolve disputes or meet a legal obligation.
8. The service, warranties, and liability
- AcePoker is provided as is. Play-money balances, rankings, features, and the service itself may change, be reset, or be withdrawn at any time.
- To the fullest extent the law allows, AcePoker is not liable for any loss arising from use of the service. Nothing on the service has cash value, so there is no monetary loss to claim from play.
- [counsel: arbitration clause and class waiver. L-31 records that an arbitration clause is what moved the UT/NJ Playtika classes into arbitration. Decide whether to include one; if so, it is the most important paragraph in this document and must be drafted by counsel, not by this draft.]
- [counsel: governing law and venue.]
9. Contact and changes
Support: [address to set].
We may change these terms. Material changes will be announced on the site at least 14 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after that date is acceptance.
Appendix: what this draft does not yet cover
For whoever picks this up, so nothing here is mistaken for complete:
- A separate Privacy Policy (required before any purchase; DOB and KYC documents are on disk).
- A responsible-play statement, if any regulator or app store asks for one.
- The B4 service agreement for hosted Discord rooms (operator of record, play-money-only, no side-betting, termination, kill switch — L-11, L-22).
- The hosted poker night booking terms (per-head pricing, cancellation, what the host provides — L-23, L-29).
- Whether a Terms checkbox at signup is added; today the signup form asserts nothing.
- Every [not yet built] marker above is a promise the product cannot keep today: bot-seat disclosure, identifying the hands affected by a breach (an admin names every tainted hand and match by id; nothing auto-voids), removal of chips won through a breach (the named hands are struck from ranking; no chip balance is adjusted), an appeal counter (a second appeal is refused by policy, not by the system), the Washington gate, and connection-record retention. Build each or strike it before this is linked.