This is kind of surprising to me that over 1.6MM hands they would "only" be running a little bit over ev bb wise as if they were sharing hole cards they "should" have ran at way over ev imo as knowing 4 to 8 more cards than your opponent will definitively boost your over ev line by a ton.

What I read from bot forum they are using recorded mouse clicks and some poster there added that you need to have misclicks too to remain undetected.

Mouseclicks is one of the simplest way to identify bots online (not just online poker, adv fraud) so I thing they have that thing covered.

@shimmy there were incidents of "miniraise bug" that indicates that at least some of accounts are fully automated at least some part of the time.

Finished checking RPTR for those botters on 888 and FTP. 5 accounts on 888, where one is still active, 3 gone in April 2015, 1 gone in December. 6 accounts on FTP, all gone in February 2015.

Lets start with the 888 botters, those MUST be from the same ring from as the ones on Stars. They have slightly different Cbeting and CheckCalling strategies then the ones on Stars and everything else is extremely similar.

That being said the 5 accounts are even more similar when compared to each other then the ones on Stars even though the 888 botters played less hands! They even have the same steal CO,BTN,SB preflop stats.

Isn't this because in BB you have the possibility of 3betting a SB open whereas when playing SB, you have fewer 3b opportunities if it's folded to blinds.

Thats the exact reason. BB 3bet > SB 3bet is not unusual for regs, BBvsBTN 3bet > SBvsBTN 3bet is rather unusual for regs. That was offtopic.

Posting stats for the 888 botters, please notice the sample sizes are 100-200K hands only, if they played around 1M like those on Stars those would converge even more.





Now the FTP bots, same ring as the ones on Stars. All gone in February 2015. Again the sample sizes are smaller. I cant understand the WTSD stat, did those play on CAP tables?

I am not so sure. Knowing "dead" cards help you play but it doesnt boost your winnings above EV line too much.

Suppose you have flushdraw on turn , and you know that your bot-friend doesn't have any cards in this suit , your chances for completing flush goes up from 22,5% to 25% . Now u can draw more often but it doesn't make you willing to go all-in because of that extra 2,5%.

So I think knowing dead cards may increase your winrate a lot but your winnings dont need to be much above All-in EV-line

These bots make so many mistakes mayby their edge comes
From knowing when their K-high fds are drawing to the nuts?

Also high 4bet might mean they know when they are not againts AAxx

Finished looking for them. I believe its just a bot ring, the hole card sharing remains a hypothesis.

24 accounts on Pokerstars, 8 still active.
6 accounts on FTP, 0 still active.
5 accounts on 888poker, 1 still active.



35 accounts from the botring played a total of 16.6M hands across PS,FTP,888. They made 1.39M net profit and payed an estimated 2.49M in rake (15/c hand). Legit players lost over 3.88M against the bots. The amount might be higher for 3 reasons. I might have missed some of them. The rake estimate is on the low side. RPTR misses zoom hands and I didnt account for that.

So sick. Great work man.

OMFG

and 4somniare is playing right now...

amazing work schwein. No matter what happens the msplo community is seriously indebted to you.

+1

cant find words how grateful i am for you. midstakes regs owe you so much.

I have tried to figure out what kind of stat is in potbets post #72. After rereading carefully what everyone wrote here and playing with my HEM I finally managed to find it. I really dont want to say what kind of stat it is because its extremely good for finding those botters even in a very small DB. I would prefer to get my hands on IPK Hand histories first and find all the scumbags over there. I also cant tell who gave me the right clue to keep this stat a secret.

Thats being said, the stat is over 90% for banned bot BOOTTLEGGER as well as all other active botters that I have hands for in my DB.

20/20 legit highest volume grinders in my DB have this stat below 57%. 6/6 botters have this stat over 90%.

Just saying,

The gratitude given to Schwein et al is well deserved,

But it's not like the botters are just going to go away. They are going to make a few small tweaks and come back with new accounts. There's way too much money on the table and basically no punishment whatsoever

So most stars/ftp bots were removed because Oink/Grethe/other players have complained, but how did 888 detect the bots and got them removed? Nobody mentioned them until now and afaik there is no thread about it.

Do they have a better bot detection system; did someone complain or both?

Schwein (out of curiosity) - what limits did the bots on FTP and 888 play? Most (if not all) games on FTP are shallow tables, thus the higher WTSD.

Last but not least, whole PLO community is so much thankful whoever you are!

Jeah Schwein,

TYVM!

So far everybody received just pennies back from pokerstars from this bot ring. I think Pokerstars is hugely at fault here, by letting bots play 16 million hands on their platform without detection. I mean WTF... I think it's certainly reasonable for players to demand PS to refund the rake they made on them, with seems to be at least 2.48 million according to Schwein's overview.

dont understand, have pokerstars paid back something for you or some1 else already for example or what? im pretty sure about that im very high on that list of players who have lost most money to this bots.

wow... 3.88m lost from legit players, and these guys making 1.2m+ is truly sickening. how do you get them to stop? can't they just keep opening shell accounts like they have already been doing? they obviously aren't going to stop voluntarily when making that much money

Last two weeks i got 2 refunds of 13 dollar and 38 dollar. I'm assuming it has something to do with this, but they don't tell what it's about.

I agree with this, although the pbm with that is that creates another incentive for stars not to find those bots. Why would they do everything they can (invest in security software, manpower etc.) to detect the bots if the consequence will be to pay up?

The problem is that even if you suspend all the mentioned accounts, they will just make new ones and continue for few millions until someone busts them again. Rinse and repeat.

Hole card sharing is a HUGE problem in PLO, especially if it's automated. How can that be stopped? I have been trying to figure out doable ways to prevent it, but can't come up with a solution.

Against botting some sort of CAPTCHA is probably the best way, maybe for PLO200+?

For long term benefit. The better they handle this situation the more faith people will gain/retain in online poker.

If they handle this poorly, i imagine it could be pretty disastrous for the general attitude towards online poker