Can everybody that doesn't at least play 50plo leave this thread alone? It's becoming unreadable.

Jeah, besides the k high flushes, paired boards come to mind. It's a ****ing huge difference if someone plays back at you on a paired board when you know 4 (or 8) extra cards. It works in 2 ways. If one of the pairs is dead, the odds of villain bluffing go up a lot. But if none of the pairs is dead, the odds of a value raise go up.

I'm also thinking back on the rake discussions. Pokerstars showed us reps that some/many people where still winning pre rakeback in a lot of limits and hence they decided that rake is currently not too high. Now i'm thinking back on this and am curious how many of those accounts where bots. For example someone showed that pre-rakeback winrates in zoom plo where extremely low... how does that figure change if you remove 10 of the biggest winners and biggest grinders from those calcs?

your english is on par with your deduction skills. i'm out.

He doesn't have to be the one doing that. He could have trained people to do it.

Are there any mid or high stakes crushers with this same weird style? Maybe somebody can look at their stats, try to find a match.

High stakes games don't run consistently. They need something to do with their time. These bots are winning $14/hour/table. That's a nice little side business.

I no longer play high stakes but when I did, I was still looking for ways to make money on the side.

I've found that WonWhenSawFlop (WWSF) is one of the most clear cut indications. All of the suspected accounts have a WWSF above 50, which is very rare. None of the 10 random different winning midstakes regs I gathered data from have WWSF above 48... I would love to hear/see stats from any regulars with WWSF in the 50-area?

Another stat to look for is the Aggression Frequency (AFQ) over multiple streets, as this pattern in the bots game are soooo aligned. I was comparing some of the stats of the midstakes regs and even guys with very similar styles have overall 8-10% differences - where the bots are all inside a 2-4% interval. This pattern is such a strong indicator, because of the way it is calculated and how big the sample sizes are.

The combination of WTSD og W$SD is also a pretty good indicator.

Finally, knowing dead cards is such a huge advantage in a game where equity runs so close. Over a larger sample knowing 4 dead cards can easily give you 8-10bb/100.

there is way more than only those matches im trying to explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38Kj6KZlt4

Regarding bluffing using known dead cards:
Checked my DB and all accounts in question that I have meaningful data of hover around breakeven in non- showdown winnings, which is way better than the average winning legit reg does.
Of course, could also just be a result of being so aggro...

@schweini et all

Is there a way you guys would be interested/ in checking for bots at lowest micro levels of both PLO and NL?

If these bots are able to rinse the poker economy at the midstakes I can only imagine the damage they can inflict on the very bottom of the food chain where new players begin their poker journey and are generally less experienced to realise what just happened to them.

I for one have had way too many "WTF this didnt just happen" moments at the micros but so far I have been careful to blame it on myself rather than suspect something shady going on. Now that the issue has been brought up, I would be very interested in actually seeing numbers: How high is the number of bots that crush the micros as opposed to the number of just more experienced players?

I am aware it might not be worthwhile investigating the micros but I still believe that's the place where they inflict the most damage overall because the skilllevel of the average micro player is so much lower and the likelihood of being spotted/detected even more so.

From what I saw in my db seregaxx and Fedor are going at each other pre when they have non dominated non Ahi suits. Makes a lot of sense.

Assuming all those bots are run by the same guy, I find it can be pretty much ruled out they are note sharing cards. Would just make zero sense for them not to.

It's quite likely that this hole card sharing thing has been going on for quite some time now across numerous networks. The mysterious closing of InsuredPlay in 2013 (link:http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/official-insuredplay-thread-1266698/) always made me wonder if there is sth fishy going on. The plot thickens I guess.

PS might already be doing something comparable but I had an idea regarding early bot detection.

Since a lot of these bot accounts start crushing reasonable stakes at 5bb+ as soon as they appear, could PS not create some sort of watch-list for new accounts that start printing? I wouldn't expect there to be too many human crushers out there who have yet to play on stars/don't have an existing account, and needless to say no recreational players are able to sustain any reasonable WRs. Thus when a new account is opened (with say a 5-figure deposit) and immediately starts crushing then this should be setting off alarm bells. These suspicious accounts could be added to some sort of watch-list where they are subject to intense scrutiny and increased security measures until PS is CERTAIN that they are entirely human-operated. This could also be combined with some stat-filters (WWSF/AFQ/3bet numbers, based on previously identified bots) to increase the potential success rates for identification.

This argument makes no sens, with proper variance, in a world where every player is losing there still would be big winners. Hopefully that wasn't the only argument they gave.

obviously it was more sophisticated than that. They showed it on aggegerate numbers for SN and SNE players as a group. But in retrospect I suspect that the nubers would show even (a lot) worse if you deduct the known bots from those samples...

But let's not derail this thread into another rake topic. But if PS does ban these acounts, we should then look into the rake numbers again.

I hope this is a wake up call for Stars. They need to implement immediate stop gap measures against the bot networks: Accounts with highly correlated stats or other evidence of automated/collusive play should be banned from sitting at the same tables with each other . They may even need to ban eastern europeans from sitting at the same tables with each other at all(I believe there is precedent for this on Pokerstars' part). At the very least this will slow the rate at which the 6max economy is hemorrhaging.

It goes without saying that they need to improve their algorithms for detecting automated/collusive play such as plays based on knowledge of hidden blockers. Honestly they should also refund the share of the rake earned by these bots since they have failed to protect game integrity and should not be profiting from bot players while their legitimate players foot the bill.

it seems like there has been a massive turnover recently in both plo and nlhe to russian/east european just popping up out of nowhere as the biggest winners in both games. and a bunch have been banned.

would be pretty surprised if there are not nlhe bot teams as well.

Hi Shwein,

From where do you find those pics? Is it a software or a website? Which one? Thank you

BTW, thanks for your investigations and I'm confident to the fact PokerStars will do a good job about this affair.

Yes they should be able to identify new accounts that start crushing fairly easily. People are saying "oh you get rid of these bots then they'll just make new accounts". Maybe so, but it SHOULD be extremely difficult to do this without being caught if Pokerstars security standards are anywhere near what they should be. PLO in general is not a game that you can just start playing and win at. It takes years and hundreds of thousands of hands for most people before they really get a strong grasp on the game. The fact that some of these accounts showed up and are putting up they numbers that they are AND absurd amounts volume with no drop-off whatsoever almost insures something is very very wrong.....Or we have the top 35 smartest people in the world who all turn out to be Russian and all were experts at PLO and Mass multi tabling.

Lex should've actually played a bunch against these guys too, so he should definitely be interested.

It should be noted that none of the suspected players in the OP aside from Samanta81 and seregaxx (afaik the two players who people are suggesting probably aren't bots) have any history of playing MTTs aside from what appears to be the Supernova quarterly 1 million dollar freerolls. I'm pretty sure every single small/midstakes PLO account that has a known player behind it has at least some MTT history whether it be playing WCOOP/SCOOP or the occasional Sunday mtt session.

FedorZaysev
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...34882.html?t=2

4somniare
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...342D1.html?t=2

emper0r92
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...ml?t=8&scp=456

BOOTTLEGGER
No MTTs tracked so no OPR page

ImissFender
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...ml?t=8&scp=342

SusaaNiN
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...ml?t=8&scp=570

------------

N@T@L@T = not a bot
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...20754.html?t=2

This thread is both fascinating and disgusting. Shame on Pokerstars here - it can't be too hard to find someone with a clue about PLO to have done some analysis and the old adage "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is" should have been enough to warrant a full investigation.

Well done though guys, you have done some amazing work pulling all this together.

well done Schwein, PS should offer you a well paid job with a new department to run!!!

Not all Eastern European are trash bro, there are cheaters and criminals in all parts of the world. Most bots appear to be from Russia and Belarus, not Poland, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, CZ, Slovakia, Bulgaria and others so lets not generalize like that. Also, in a sophisticated criminal operation where there is money to be made and starting capital is not a problem, there can be accounts setup from New Zealand to Brasil. It looks to be concentrated in one area for now, but if there is some kind of geographic profiling by Stars, bot operators will adjust in no time.

Also, someone mentioned small stakes and micros, i am afraid that this is even bigger problem, its likely that tables at those stakes are infested with bots. Terrible for new players to play against bots, they will feel hopeless very soon and just give up.

It's from whotfru.info, a tracking website.

PS has all the hh. the slightest desire for fair games means busting these guys should be so insanely easy. there are so many patterns you can uncover when you have all the hh.

Thanks

I don't think Eastern Euros are trash, but Stars has a crisis on their hands and they can buy some time by blocking Eastern Euros from playing at the same tables. It's not a perfect solution, but it makes the logistics involved in setting up a bot network more difficult as at the very least they have to obtain and verify identities in multiple countries/geographic areas instead of one. IIRC they did this with Chinese players in stud games and DONs.

Hopefully they can come up with some real security to protect their game integrity in the interim. This incident is pretty shocking--it makes you wonder wtf kind of security they have in place to detect suspicious play patterns. These accounts have very strongly correlated strategic profiles, not to mention their shared geographical locations and shared play time.

Its clear that they didn"t take bot issues seriously at all and i hope that their whole security team and their bosses get fired for that, but on a good side, they did manage to sign RONALDO, now how great is that?!?!