I represent a team of data scientists, software developers and poker experts. We’ve been providing outsourced bot detection for several poker operators and now we want to reach a broader audience to gather feedback about the need for such a service, not only from poker rooms, but also from end users of online poker platforms - the players.  

We believe that bots, especially “organized” bot rings are a real threat that hurt poker rooms and regular players badly. Bots are taking money from the poker ecosystem, discouraging both recreational and professional poker players.

We employ statistical approach which has proven to be effective based on our experience. Several bot rings have already been shutdown based on our reports.

Poker rooms will be pleased to know that our approach requires no private information about their customers. Our solution is based on anonymized hand histories so there are no privacy concerns

Sample report at glance

Poker stats analysis




Behavioral analysis #1




Behavioral analysis #2




Behavioral analysis #3




Overall distribution of legit vs suspected players




We are willing to provide a few sample reports to prove our concept based on requests from reputable 2+2 members, both players and rooms representatives. There are certain limitations. Basically, we need HH not only for players accused in wrongdoings, but also for average players, ideally whole coverage for poker variant and stakes in question.

If we have enough interest from 2+2ers to check some suspicious players we soon will post guidelines how to make a proper requests.

Just wanted to say that I've been part of the Safepoker team for about 6 months now. This is definitely a step to the right direction in the fight against bots.

You should reach out to guys like Schwein (though i don't think he's posted under that name since since the end of the Stars plo bot ring thread) and Internet. Basically any guy thats' helped in the discovery of bot rings in the past on 2p2. How receptive do you find poker room operators when you reach out to them about your service?

Hi Warden,

Thanks for heads-up for Schwein and Internet, will try to reach them soon.

As for poker room reaction - I would say they are rather perceptive and indeed shut down some of groups we identified.

Vive la Resistance!

While it is unfortunate that game conditions have resulted in a demand for these services, it is nice to hear that people are stepping up and doing something about it.

As a US player (who doesn't play a ton of PLO and much less NL), the effects of botting haven't yet affected me to the extent that ROW players have been victimized.

But please don't forget us here in the States! Ignition, ACR, and possibly other US facing sites are also susceptible. Thanks

(Make) a way for poker players to invest in your company?

No i would not open donate you you will be a viable business very fast,

-Acknowledge how much of your work will be trying to Communicate to poker sites that if they keep on being Recognized as bot ponds... Dont give 2+2 'Sites are great so far...', not so early..

-Take our money to help you with all of that, from players all over the world. Let us stake you.
-Give us back however much you calculate suitable, whenever...

-Let's slowly build our game great again.

edit: i just got the part 'we are already contracted by few operators'.
-We invest more, you can always grow and strenghten yourselves, and so directly, poker industry...

-I have no idea who these guys are, i see this for the first time and i can only hope they are not from my city which Is, one of the software hubs of Europe lololol. -I would just genuinely like to 'help' them and shove them some of my rolls to work with...

I have a number of contacts in the US markets. I'd love to speak to a rep of your company and see if I can help drum up some business for you guys. With only 2 posts, I doubt you guys have PMs enabled yet. Please find my contact information in my profile and get in touch

--
Kahn

doing the lords work

We set up our advertisers with PM abilities right away.

Wow great to hear this is a thing!

-Make a site to publish your reports establish it as strong in poker industry/ media. Then, even stronger.

-Get even lawyers, ready, for very uncooperating sites going against you. Im like serious, some of them rely on bots and will just say you are blackmailing.
-Have sites attack'' your findings, defend them then stronger with your expertise/ work/ evidence. Have more sites HAVE to contract you to prove they are clean.
Then poker players will much rather straight pay you- to do your analysis. -I open trust your analysis already. What we do with them now ?

-Have our investments help you get into that much stronger angle of beeing an Industry Policeman with a big fn cocked gun, and you can only really succeed from there. Here, ewallets, wire transfers for that. You can amass soo much more funding so faster that way, if you have us from 7 continents -Invest in Growing, a powerful company that will benefit us all directly, and for maybe a trivial return, maybe in 10 years.
If it all fall through...You will be making a new such company, with some more of our money. And again, learn on failures until you establish a model that will really clean the poker world. I really believe in this... Until your site is as big as Pokernews, and more reputable. You understand what im trying to draw ?

-Players have been proving in threads on this very 2+2 that ipoker is filled with bots, for years now. Bots take from players, network rake then seize filled bot accounts, and never refunded players. Like playing video poker, they just empty the machine. What do we have and can do from that? Nothing until we get that in the face then ears then head of the average depositing Joe and convince him with some very very strong Credibility as well. So he first looks up PokerSafe when deciding where to make the next deposit. He is the key, but you must be as strong and big to even get to him. Take my money, but not just to do an analysis -for me, but to advertise it on SkySports in primetime.

-i keep reading your posts over and over and i cant understand what you are saying at all.
-@pokersafe, can you please explain what it is you are offering?

Are there any poker rooms that you've contacted that have said words to the effect of "We don't need you. We don't have a problem with bots", or are they all generally in favour of the fight against cheats?

wow nice, I am so glad now.

Sorry for delays with responses and thanks to everybody for support, we really appreciate it. We are going to attend ICE Totally Gaming and London Affiliate Conference next week, so it slows us a bit. If any operators or interested parties want to schedule a meeting - please PM me.

As for specific questions

I'm not sure I got all of your point I'd say your ideas are very ambitious but not sure if we can follow it at this moment.

PM sent

Do you mean for 2+2ers or for B2B clients?
Anyway, in short we offer ad hoc or periodic bot detection reports.

I would say some of the operators believe that they have problems of higher importance than bots.

I will be offline tomorrow, but will be back on Monday.

I don't question the principle, and I sympathize - but I see an uphill battle for you guys.

The technique of identifying statistical outliers is quite well-known, but there are some practical questions, and all of them are leading into one direction: it won't fly without you becoming a part of the site.

Without being a part of the site, you guys:
1. won't be able to get enough HHs (data mining is a ToC violation, and performing analysis based on single-player HHs is )
2. won't see info beyond HHs (IPs, timings, mouse click coordinates, etc. - and it is important in security investigations). What was the name of the guy who had stats and patterns so controversial that PS has sent a rep to his house to see him playing?
3. full anonymization won't work - and partial one ("we won't tell you the IDs, but will tell you that it was the same player in different hands") still raises privacy concerns.
4. etc. etc. etc.

And if you want to become a part of the site, what's the value of you guys for the site? To tell "hey, we hired a self-proclaimed team of experts to help us with bots?". IMO, it is a bad case of catch-22 - it's difficult for you to demonstrate the expertise w/o becoming part of the site, and it is even more difficult to become a part of the site w/o demonstrating the expertise :-(.

Don't really think what you posted is an issue, I know 1 member of this group personally helped me to get roughly 12 bots banned back in 2015 on party so I know they work. Just wondering if the purpose of this thread is for high volume players to have an official contact to keep sending suspicious accounts or is it not for that?

There must be a way to force the rooms that are registered in the financial markets to use this.. It's really easy to find most bots as they are always doing the same kind of things with no emotions and this method finds this really quickly.

Please name those operators if you're allowed to. That would be a good publicity for those sites as relatively 'safe havens'.

Do I take it right that you only act as consultants reporting suspicious screen names for investigation but your suspicions have no legal power? I.e. a poker room still has to follow the usual tedious procedure of investigation and proof in order to confiscate and redistribute funds rightfully, doesn't it?

Isn't botting totally legal in those markets, though?

If the operator doesn't provide HH files to players, then only the operator itself can give them to you. Do such sites provide you with full coverage batches of anonymised HHs?

I have a few questions

1. this will not be limited to NLHE bots, but to all games, who are tracked by tracking softwares, right?
2. wouldn't your actions let bot owners make just one bot per site, so that you cannot compare it to other bots and identify it?
3. will you compare stats of bots from one site/network with other networks? i think it will improve bot identification.

Then the bots won't be colluding and won't be nearly as dangerous as those that sit together and know each other's hole cards. The biggest positive effect from the analysis of Safe Poker is the detection of colluders.

This statistical analysis looks less efficient against a lone human who, while clicking the buttons of the poker client on his own, uses a real-time AI as a prompter (aka a 'GTO dream machine'; or just a program displaying an appropriate chart out of a large collection depending on the situation like skier_5's software did) - surely, they can report the player for having weird stats (the move timings won't be too weird because he'll be acting instantly in obvious spots where he doesn't need a prompt), but almost the only way to prove him guilty is to force him to play in the presence of the site's employee or record himself playing with a webcam like Stars (incl. FTP) sometimes require (I've never heard of any incident when any other poker site asked a player to do this). Such 'machines' won't be taking as much money out of the economy as bot rings cumulatively, though, as only a few high stake players can afford to hire a programmer to create a custom 'machine'.

Hi, sorry for delays, responses below:

We do not data mine any site ourselves. We have been provided with anonymized hand histories after signing a contract and necessary NDAs with the operator.

You are correct but remember that the bots today are not all fully automated. A significant percentage of the bots have a human controlling them all or most of the time. The human is there to insert the actions proposed by the "bot" based on preset algorithms. While we can analyse timing information (if provided), other information like personal details, IPs, computer IDs etc. are not used and will be left for the operator to evaluate.

Can you please clarify what kind of privacy concerns site providing anonymized HHs raise?

Yes and no. As we mentioned, we are ready to provide a few sample reports requested by reputable 2+2ers to prove our approach works. The sample reports will be provided if the requests meet certain reasonable requirements, e.g. sufficient number of hands etc. We will certainly ignore any baseless accusations.

But for now, the primary receiver of any suspected bot report should be the relevant site itself. This might change if we see sufficient demand for B2C reports.

Currently we are not allowed to reveal our clients' names for variety of reasons. I do apologize for this. You mostly right about consulting part. But it's a bit different: we provide poker rooms with reports, their security department checks these specific accounts and then make a decision whether to close account or keep monitoring it.

Correct. Our clients provide us with 100% anonymized HHs periodically.

Definitely. Our solution works for most games, but currently we are providing reports for NLHE only. As mentioned above, when we work for poker operators, they supply us with anonymized HH, if not - then yes, our approach is limited to rooms that are tracked.

coon74 already replied to this part, but I also should add that we are able to detect player with abnormalities, it's just requires more effort to prove wrongdoings. We can also do cross network analysis to identify such bots on different networks.

Certainly. We keep a database of identified bot accounts and were able to identify legit player that played in different networks. Basically our "Overall distribution of legit VS bot accounts" already does this.



Looking forward for further feedback / questions.

Thanks for the explanations!

If a player gets access to an anonymous database for his own stakes, then he can decode his opponents' numbers by matching this DB against the non-anonymous DB that he has collected during his own play. (This is an issue for those games where the poker client writes players' screen names into the HHs so it isn't an issue for Party's non-FastForward cash games.)

E.g. if he sees a hand where Player 1, Player 2 and Player 3 were dealt in and recognises Player 3 as himself, then he'll learn the screen names of Players 1 and 2 (which are written in his own DB except for the Party case) and can then replace the numbers with the known screen names in the anonymous DB and load the hands of Player 1 or 2 where he didn't participate into his own DB to have more accurate stats on Players 1 and 2.

So we have to rely on your compliance with the NDA, i.e. to trust that you don't leak any anonymous DB to anyone who plays the stakes covered by it.

When are you going to start providing reports for PLO?

WPN may crash if this is enforced. How will they maintain a player pool when 30% of people are banned!???