You are sayin 1-few ppl behind the bots are like mafia? Pokerstars does lose way more insted of winning if they let those bots play also. E.i did not fully uunderstand yor post so im not sure who are you calling mafia here)

I have to correct myself, this specific company is not supporting Stars. They supported Tilt back in 2010 and were busted. Currently they support Americas Cardroom, WSOP.Com (all sites), IPoker and 888.

I guess you are using the wrong tab. Open reports, add the report VsPlayer as cts suggested and search for the players. Alternatively, you can make an alias of all bots and click on the same report searching for your name to see how they do against you (second way is a bit quicker).

Please for the love of god keep that away from newspapers, etc.

Regulars are aware
Stars is aware

Thats all we need.

Maybe switch on your brains for once. Do you want to make every recreational aware that there was some foulplay?? So that they all can say "i knew it!", warn their friends, etc.

What do you expect to happen? Stars is working on this but this is big and needs some time.

The one thing which is worse than bots are recs stopping to play and warning their friends to deposit...

WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

How these accounts can still be playing is a joke. This is not the high courts of justice where innocent until proven guilty, this is a poker room filled with scumbags. Just suspend their account and if they are found not guilty, no harm done they can continue playing.

Its not like they gonna leave stars and their 10bb/100 winrate because they feel unjustly accused. Its a lot more likely other players will leave because the accused are still playing and it looks like stars isn't taking this seriously.

+1

The glass has been tapped. Fixing it not keeping the rec fish in the dark is now the only option (on many things).

Pretending there is no problem, lying to new players is not sustainable, indeed all it means is that if the ignorant fish realises what is going on they hate the deception as well as the cheating.

It ain't 2006.

everyone has the right to be informed/warned about this scandal. we are playing here for REAL money. why should the recreationals not have the right to be informed and continued to be scammed by the russian mobsters?

so is the poker-community, there are a lot of scumbags and the honest players have to deal with that situation and the results out of it.

I am very happy to see Richas posting in this thread, he is by far the most knowledgeable person when it comes to regulatory issues and governing bodies on this forums. Also totally agree that keeping that quite was no longer an option.

Since I started this thread a couple of PokerStars mid/highstakes regs emailed me that they have reported those players from my botting list, and not just one name but few of them after spotting an obvious connection between those accounts, and yet nothing was done. PokerStars Game Integrity was getting reports on those botters as early as October 2014.

Oink and Grethe forwarded their whole investigation to PokerStars in February 2015, that was 5 months ago. I saw their thread last week and see how long it took me the find the rest of the botters, and I dont have an 8 figure budget like the Game Integrity Team.

We already have June 2015, its been 9 months since the first reports started flowing in to the Game Integrity Team. There are 10 accounts still active, at least one them plays now as I am writing this. Over the last year over 5% of my playing volume was done when I was seated with one of those cheaters at the same table.

How much longer should everyone wait quietly till this gets resolved?

Following

Now I'm paranoid that every unknown Russian playing Party/888 midstakes games is cheating too.

Not to mention all the random accounts in the iPoker games.

Man, what a mess.

Could LuckiGomp potentially be somehow involved in this? He has played very little poker on PS/FTP the last couple of years.

There is a certain irony to the situation that I would like to share. It may be lost on some but I don't give a ****.

Imagine how funplayers would feel if they found out for the first time about all the historic additional third party software that had been used against them by grinders?

I guess they would feel somewhat cheated like grinders in thread?

I agree with this and Richas post.

The main point I make is that online poker needs 1) a cleanup, and 2) a level playing field for all whom want to participate.

Crying to keep this information out of the public realm does not aid the cause.

The issue is finding a way to make the public domain actually want to give a **** about the situation on a $6 billion online economy that is completely alien to them.

Regards,
Tops

anyone could potentially be involved but low volume online over the last couple of years compared to previous years shouldn't be the only criterion for being flagged as complicit. if in fact that's the only basis for your speculating LG may be involved i find it distasteful.

i'm not saying he is or he isn't involved but i do know that it's been said he plays nosebleed live games in russia, which could very well explain his absence from the virtual felt.

I feel like this is a situation in which more publicity is needed - the risk of scaring off some players now is not as great as the risk of this stuff going on and continuing to fly under the radar, gradually killing the games.

I'm not sure why stars isn't taking this more seriously already, but it seems clear that they don't prioritise preventing botting or possibly hole card sharing as much as honest players would like them to, and so publicity seems like the only thing that might change that.

If they haven't been bothered up till now then a few regs complaining on twoplustwo won't change anything, so something else needs to happen. Mainstream coverage of this issue seems like the best option.

I also agree with whoever said that all players have the right to know about this, not just people who read twoplustwo.

I am a reg in these games, please let me know if there is something I can do to help.

Lusky

Is it an idea to check where their profit comes from? If they share cards than by far most of the profit should come from hands where (at least) 2 of them are on the same table. Im realy curious to find out how they cheated, since it looks prty clear that cheating was part of the scam.

Shimmy from 2+2 already wrote a script to filter out hands where 2 or more of them were at the same table. We are pursuing the shared hole card theory as well.

I don't think Tim and I are saying to keep this a secret. Contrary to that.

BUT: Until we have striking evidence where Stars can not look away anymore it doesn't help to make this as public as possible. Given a certain degree of evidence I don't think Stars acts differently, depending on how public the case is. Yes they were reported before, but with little evidence I suppose. Schwein is doing great work here and if the people involved work together (privately) to accumulate more evidence, Stars will act if they deem it to be enough evidence. Accusing these accounts publicly of botting just yet is not only -EV (imo) but also possibly plain wrong.

I'm sure that if pastafiore would have had strong evidence back when he reported them Stars would have taken the case as serious as they do now (hopefully). The publicity is not really a factor imo, only the quality of evidence. Sure, in order to provide good evidence we need knowledge and hands from multiple people, which is why I suggested that a private group of those involved and those who can actually help should form.

Once the evidence is collected and prepared well to present to Stars we should wait for their investigation. After that decision would be the time to go public imo. Either with a success story where bots were banned and players are reimbursed for the money lost or at least for the rake paid, or with making the public aware how Stars ****ed up and keeps doing so by not banning bots and/or not reimbursing players.

On topic. Schwein, I talked to my professor who is a genius in statistics (among other things) and he is very interested in this case. He read the OP and some more posts and suggested some steps in order to find actual evidence, as from a statistical point of view your work is not yet enough to conclude that foul play is going on.
He suggested working with multiple control groups (your group of legit russian regs is good, but not enough) composed of different types of player. We should have a group of legit russian regs, a group of the biggest legit winners, a truly random sample of legit regs and possibly a group of legit b/e regs. It would also make sense to create groups of players who learned from similar sources, f.ex. a group of RIO regs.

Furthermore we need to calculate correlations between stats across all players. High correlations mean that our indices are not independent, therefore random similarities in one stat easily translate to other stats.

If I or possibly my prof can help with some calculations let me know. We could for example calculate the probability of all alleged accounts having similar stats if they were truly independent.

The level of complacency with which stars has been dealing with so many such issues is appalling.

Hackers getting access to accounts some time back , the recent automated software usage , now this bot ring .

To all the professional grinder fan boys of poker stars who think stars is some pinnacle of honesty and integrity -

It is pretty clear and evident by now what kind of an approach stars has towards such concerns. Heck , people had warned stars about some of these players almost a **** year back !! You really think if they were genuinely concerned it would take them a year to stop these guys with complete hhs available on them . People getting robbed of 1000s of dollars and getting 40 dollar refunds . Really !

What everyone needs to understand is that stars is a business. Maximization of profit is there only and ultimate goal. All their decision will be based just on numbers. The recent raise in rake , spin n gos coming in , talks of having more casino type games and other sorts of gambling options . All this should tell you that they dont give a **** about Online poker. They just care about the $$$$$$ . So letting suspicious players carry on for over an year generating them over 2 million in rake as long as it doesnt blow up in the media was a very plus ev decision from there point of view.

I am actually very glad this happened , because this should be the beginning of the end for stars . Happened with ub , happened with ftp , will happen with stars too . I hope soon enough though.

As of today the online poker scene is as fkd up as it can be. With stars almost monopolizing the market , they can pretty much do whatever they want to . Its high time we the consumers did something about it .

Even if stars offers full compensation of money lost by players and the rake generated by them too , it is still not enough . Something like this should never ever have happened . Specially after repeated number of people warning them over an year back. If it wasnt for schwien they would have let this continue for god knows how much longer. I for sure dont want to play on such a site.

Hope this is the beginning of a new era - lower rake , no bots , no automated software .

Should not be very hard to do really if you had a huge database. Their winrate playing with no bots could be 0 and when 2+ bot are presents through the roof.

The running over ev thing is theorically good too but it's way more subtle to find and prove as anyone could run hundreds of BI over ev or under no only bots.

Can't wait to see the results...

very good post KBE!
If I can be of any help in a group let me know. I just do not have a deep knowledge in statistics but if someone tells me what to do I will be more than happy to help. I am regular on 200-600 Stars/Ipoker and should have enough samplesize to get valid results.

btw I have not seen fedor and seregaxx playing today. good indicator stars starts taking action?

This is ridiculous and damning evidence against STARS.

I wrote to Stars at least 2 years ago complaining about what I found online. There are English, Russian (and Chinese) language websites (especially .onion) where players are actively seeking collusion buddies, selling bots, offering complete analysis of players using stats they shouldn't have access to and a range of other products to aid cheating. Is it fair to say that without Russian PTR, not even the OP and his team could have collated the necessary data?

Keeping quiet is what got us into this mess. It seems that if a poker player without great online experience sits down at a midstakes cash table on Stars, they are either surrounded by scripted bum-hunting sharks or fed upon by merciless bots.

My ego lets me think I would have adjusted to beat a single bot. What if Phil Ivey sat with 2-4 colluding players in PLO without them even using bots? His chances of winning must drop from the 55-65% record he has even against top pros, to what, 30-40% playing perfect poker against colluders who are playing 8-16 cards between them?

It wouldn't shock me at all to discover eastern euros have been sharing hole cards in all games, especially NLHE. Beating bots is impossible for 90% of recs, playing against a field of colluders even outside a bot ring is impossible for everyone. It's frightening to think how impossible the game would be if bots were colluding.

Russians are now crushing all games on Stars. It takes 5-10 years to become a top player yet virtually overnight eastern euros changed the landscape of poker for even the very best players with strong winning records.

I am afraid the eastern euros and Russians in particular are going to have to be segregated on Stars. As Russia is now the largest single market and dominates, a segregation policy (e.g. Chinese) would seriously effect the volume and profitability of everyone else.

Ah **** it, "Добро пожаловать в рай", I'm off to buy a few Russian brides and put them to work at mid-high stakes PLO, Stud, TD, Razz, Badugi and Draw. In the time it takes for me to get caught, I'll have already cashed out to my Russian bank account which no western government can touch.

NeedB4Greed, I hate to sound impolite, but how about you go f yourself you nationalistic piece of biological waste.

Wtf does nationality have to do with being a scumbag? There are a lot of perfectly legitimate Eastern European players, while at the same time there are dare I say "human beings" such as you any country would be ashamed of having.

You should be banned from everything for this!!!