If I were one of them I'd speak up because I don't want a huge number of 2+2 regs to analyze my game in detail and post the results for everyone to see.

I've been taking note lately on Party, and the "clones" very often play without another one at the table and play when there are 2-9 players. So I think collusion is less likely, at least on Party. They also still never respond to chatting their name.

lol so true...

If they are not bots and not colluding can anyone explain the abonormal stats that are over large hand samples? I'm with PatInTheHat that regardless if you think bot or not we have to keep reviewing hands because if it is not colluding and it is not a bot these guys sure are ffking good over 100k hands.

Sure, but if they're following some kind of strategy they've read about somewhere (a strategy site, a seminar, a forum) they don't want to shed light on that for obvious reasons. Giving up the source is worse than having people analyzing their game thoroughly (which usually doesn't happen anyway). There are no clear incetives to speak up imo, but it's still weird none of them have considering there's a ton of names on the list.

Whatever, based on the information in this thread I don't suspect collusion. At least not yet.

still it's very funny that nobody knows any of these players, since that's more often the case than not and the poker community isn't that big imho..

thats how italian play. everyone of them on FTP plays exactly like that

oh rly? because that's all i see.

i) it is nearly impossible to specify a strategy well enough in any natural language to enable this sort of statistical convergence. think about how many marginal/ambiguous spots there are (tens of thousands, many non-overlapping w/indistinguishable ev differences b/n options in isolation) when youre playing very loose. there will ofc be a ton of variation in how individuals respond;

ii) even if i) is false and they are all being taught the same super specific style somewhere (where, exactly?) by some super smart teacher, then:

a) why arent any of them playing on stars? random player from player population will be a stars customer.. i dont know.. 10-20%? dont know if it's lower for dudes from these sub-pops but given that they are on ftp..
b) why dont some of them play more tables? think about the distribution of # of tables played by a random 5/10 pro. now, why are all of these guys playing 3? think also about their 'volume distribution' across sites. very strange if it's just one guy or a handful. what's their motivation?
c) why are most/all from countries representing a small proportion of the player population? % chance a random player is not from North America/Scandinavia/Germany? how about from portugal? new zealand? italy?
e) why arent any of them playing lower stakes? % chance a random 'student' on a forum, at a seminar, or whatever would only have monies to play lower stakes is, uhm, high!
f) why dont any of them respond in chat? probability of a random non-english 5/10 player responding in chat to 'hey, PLAYER' has gotta be 10% or more. 0.9^55 is what?
g) why doesnt anyone here know any of them? % chance a random 5/10 winner is known by someone on this forum is really high.


and so on. there are rebuttals and nits to pick with each point above (stars is tougher, maybe its only a few guys from russia using proxies from multiple countries and alternating through accounts on diff sites, they only allow 5/10 players into their cabal, your questions offer inconsistent alternatives, etc.) but they all kind of suck. in any case, taking all of the above in the aggregate, this looks highly suspicious and concluding 'nothing is up' is an epic reasoning fail. think like poker players.

the only problem i have w/concluding 'bots' is that anyone smart enough to make a winning 5/10 poker bot has much better things to do with their time (or so i thought?). secretive cabal of eastern euro experts is my favored alternative atm! that'd be pretty cool. less cool somehow if they're australian.

Looks to me as though if you keep playing them you will change your tune.

Sorry VanVeen, but this sounds quite a paranoia to me. With very specific teaching you will converge pretty quick to a base set of stats.

All the other points you are writing are just speculation, a lot of people play on 2-3 tables, a lot of players never chat. Why should they play 2/4 if they are profitable at 5/10? If they have learn the same style they probably have some friends in common and I don't find strange that they are coming from just a few countries. Why should any of the 2+2 readers (which are a minority of the poker world population) know them? And why should they introduce themself here and say "Hi, I'm Mr. X, I'm one of those guys".

I don't see any hard proof in what you wrote.

There are tons of these guys/bots on Everest, I mean like 30+, and since the player pool there is quite smaller than ipoker/FTP, it's hard to notice. 95% with Italy/Aus/NZ flag. I'm pretty sure I remember them stacking one another pretty often, not much collusion fears for me.

I'll do more investigation on them in the next few days, me thinks.

I could see this being a totally legitimate operation, whether its a smart backer with a plan to stake a bunch of mediocre regs with enough to play 5/10 and a gameplan that allows them to eke out a modest WR(but a nice WR if you include RB) against bad to mediocre regs but after a short time gets adjusted to and exploited by the smarter and more astute regs(''no chat boys, we want to keep our secret for as long as possible), or just a site/select group of coaches who teach this style, it seems plausible.

However, i think that it is also plausible that given the large amount of quirky non-human-like traits exhibited by these ''clones''

1:The 4-high call-down shown in an earlier post.

2:The no chat thing.

3:The lack of auto top-up

4:By far the biggest one in my view is that the only site that they seem to not be regs on is Stars and that is the one site that has regular checks to prevent ''botting''.

(I know i'm forgetting some so please add to this list when you see it) they could also definitely be bots.

Just some thoughts. Ps. glad to see vanveen posting again, one of the all-time best analytical minds when it comes to poker discussion.

Post saver

I find it odd that none of the accounts in question play more than 3 tables despite being able to beat the limit.
If the players happen to play more tables but tableselect across several networks. How come it never happens they find 4 good tables on one network.

On the flipside of the Pokerstars:

1. PS has more restrictive deposit limits for 1st time users
2. Less RB
3. More RB at Ipoker and smaller networks who provide adequate traffic for 3 tabling

However the vow of secrecy bugs me as even the much hated short stackers didn't hide from the community!

These guys don't softplay eachother, it just appears that way as a result of their style: they 3b/fold in position with a pretty tight range, so despite their high VPIPs, when one of them openraises the other one will play like 9% VPIP just like he would against anyone else's openraise.


lol mine is very similar

is it out of the realm of possibility that they're the same people/bots/whatever and its not simply the way italians play?