Still didnt get an answer. I'm sure they are discussing a way to answer something how they will obv not refund the rake and they are trying to figure out arguments for keeping the mula.

FIFA? Is their anyone left in FIFA who isn't corrupt?

Crossposting this. it's a pokerstars email I got in reply when I asked about these threads. The part I bolded fully confirms that there are bots beating SSPLO/MSPLO on pokerstars, right?

Let's see, i am a 5x sne on stars, play with these accounts every day. i have maths and computer science degrees, my day job is programmer/web developer and my previous positions include database developer / analyst and data analyst. Good enough for you, am i qualified?

Now please stop trolling.

Sent from my GT-I9195 using 2+2 Forums

oh, the irony

Dmitry
PokerStars Game Integrity

Russia

Right now there were no suspicious Russians in plo100

this is not a good point, seregaxx linked me his sharkscope stuff long time ago but i was, and i still am still sure about that he is one of bots. so is most other regs too(i assume)

that proves absolutely nothig if they have played in past, i have verymuch reasons for that, and i think most of regs who play plo50+ does agree in this.

that thing has been mentonied here before also, so can people just stop repeat posting this kind of thigs here wich are only braking this to get bots busted.

imo in this kind of situations you just should not post here for example if:

-thing is very obivous already/have been told here many times before.

=you have not read this thread trough.

+1

One of the most common misconceptions of botting is that you need a world class PLO player to create a world class PLO bot, or that the bot can be only as good at poker as his creator and therefore there must be really good PLO player behind it or working for them. Well there might be one but thats not necessary.

Usually the team writing the bot will create many versions of it and let them play against each other. After a few days they discard the ones that did badly and put some new in the testing pool with slightly altered stats together with those that did well. Rinse and repeat the process, the longer the better. Thats by far the most common way to do it. A bot derived this way would have few characteristics:

The bot will not adjust to other players, I think we can conclude this to be true because the ones I found on PLO50 have exactly the same stats as the ones on PL400, and they have played against different villians, after all the average PL50 grinder is a bit different from the average PL400 grinder. Also the ones on zoom played the same as the ones on reg tables even though the zoom pool is much tighter on average.


Moving on to the most important things. A bot that is not trying to exploit others but tries himself to be unexploitable will have some stats that are very unusual compared to the average regular. I have decided to look at folding to bets IP. I mean if someone folds 50% of the time IP, he can be exploited by leading into them even for pot. If someone folds over 41% IP he can be exploited by leading into them with 70%+ bet size.

I was checking different situations for the over folding thing.

The following screen shows how much they fold to Cbet IP in all pots and then in 3bet pots (after calling a 3bet).



Now another spot, lets see how much they fold after checking the flop behind.



But maybe they have an unbalanced check behind range in 3bet pot and overfold over there? Nope.




Everything I write here is just circumstantial evidence. Still I think that those screenshots are a solid proof that those are from the GTO based sort that tries to be unexploitable.

In the 4 diferent spots they cant be exploited by a pot bet and not even by a 70%pot bet.

Now go guys and check your own stats and see how many of those you have below 50% or 41%(the value needed to be unexploitable against a 70%pot bet). I am not saying that having those stats below 41% is some key to be good at poker, absolutely not, but you need to have them like this to be unexploitable if you dont want to adjust to others.

EDIT: I have again only used my own database with less then 100K hands for the combined botter alias.

sample of 208k

Thats a not the same as I posted, I was looking for fold IP in all 4 instances.
Although I have to admit that your numbers are pretty consistent also, they fold similar % of range in some different situations.

Please wait with posting more screenshots, I will work with shimmy and Trollaccount who has a 1.6M hands DB. Then we can provide stats for the individual botters and not just an alias.

You'll get wrong results:





Check yours


Also +1 to Stars paying back all the rake they earned from botters.

Just want to say big thanks to Schwein and others, who are working on with this.

I cannot believe pokerstars in their emails to various people state they are investigating this 'Alleged Bot Ring' and the worst of what we almost definitely think are Bots are still playing now on 6 max & also on the waiting lists!

Fedor is crushing as usual and seems his botting program is getting better as he rarely loses a double run all-in. Like 1 minute ago against Renan with cards you would not want to go all in with!

Samanta81 is sitting on his usual 5 buy in stacks!

Less action today. No sergeaxx yet.

So just two of the 25+ names being in the top 3 of suspected bots are still playing & ripping us off.

The player Moxxy from the UK does speak and it's a Manchester nickname. He's playing $.50/1.00 PLO and I don't believe he's a bot. I've played him now and again and he holds a conversation.
Over to the OP who seems to have more weight behind him to maybe send the entire contexts of this thread to pokerstars via an archive log.

The thing is, the bots are the best customers.

I look at it like 2002-05 when I played lineage 2 and it was infested with bots, they basically are the lifeblood of the game.

It would be so easy to just ban people who are suspected of botting or have weird tendencies, im sure its very very easy for stars, but they dont actually want to ban en mass.

If lineage banned all the bots they would have a -40% drop in traffic, all the years i played there they never did mass bans on confirmed botters. Each botter paid $14.99 a month to play, so to lose 30-40% of all your subscribers could equal millions of dollars lost instantly.

The poker equivalent would be producing high rake, in fact the high rake "subscriber" for poker far outweights the 14.99 lineage 2 customer. Thousands of dollars per month can be raked per bot, making a ban en mass for Pokerstars to be possibly tens of millions lost in revenue.

WARNING - regulation TLR - if not interested in solutions, skip.

Four main bits
1) Cheating reporting to UKGC
2) Compensation - UK precedents
3) Prosecution - UK & Overseas
4) Getting action
_____________________________________

Thanks for the PM. This is an issue I have been discussing with the UKGC for about three years now. They have been open to discussion but I am not too happy on the action taken to date. The reasons for that have been basically resource limitations not willingness from the UKGC.

They have gone in six months from regulating zero poker to regulating 95%+ of it globally. They are recruiting but have lost their head of remote gambling to the Remote Gambling Association only a few weeks ago. They have only just started getting funding for regulating online poker (from the sites, the UKGC is entirely funded by licence fees).

To date there is no history of any regulator fining or taking action against a poker site. The history is regulators running from failed sites and player losses. Indeed the history in many jurisdictions is close to collusion, the regulators used to compete with each other via credibility and lax regulation to attract operators, using EU access as a big bonus. That regime has ended, now to be in the UK they need a UK icence, for the first time te reguator gets a freer hand to impose stuff because the UK market (10%+ and more for casino) means the big players need a UK licence.

1) Cheating reporting to UKGC

Now the regulatory implications of cheating are pretty obvious. The UK rules have a requirement for operators to report all cheating immeditely (in practice 7 days). The reglatory should get access to all the data, amount won, player identity, IP info, status of the inquiry by the operator. Details of accounts banned, details of "compensation paid" and funds seized. All this information we woud love to have is a regulatory requirement - it has to be given to the UKGC.

This requirement to report is what I have banged on about with the UKGC for ages. The difficulty s that that the UKGC is a regulator not an investigator. They employ about 280 people, their budget is about £15m but those dealing with criminality not regulation are a tiny fraction, a handful at most. OK they have access to the police national computer and can check criminal records of anyone in the EU as well as UK records but they were set up for exceptional events. Their role is mosltly about sports integrity and the rare investigations that kicks up, their other focus is "money laundering" which often in the UK eans big losses by criminals who gamble for fun or are problem gamblers and maybe stealing to fund that rather than any fantasy terrorist or mafia scenario.

The difference for poker is that cheating is endemic. It is a routine part of the game. When I met with the regulators it was clear that there was a very sensible Chinese Wall arangement set up. That makes sense for one off inquiries where the UKGC pass it to the prosecuters and the National Crime Agency but routine endemic cheating needs proper reporting and publication of those cheating figures.

So sites routinely telling the UKGC how many enquiries, into how many, for what, how many accounts closed, amount of funds seized, compensation paid out and details of all those "guilty" account holders passed to the regulator and the NCA.

THe UKGC can then use those figures to track trends, geographical, level, game type, cheating type and by comparing sites figures see who acts and who does not, leading them to be able to tell laggards to get going on enforcement. The figures can be amalgamated and published for us to see too without any commercial confidentiality concerns.

Better the UKGC will be, should be, shocked by and shamed by the figures involved, ie estimated $3.88m from players by this one alleged ring. The $$$ value alters the priority it is given.

This regular reporting is probably not yet happening. The UKGC have not issued guidelines to the sites telling them what data they want, when, they certainly don't want every email from the micros saying I was robbed that turns out to not have any substance so they need some sort of filter by the sites but that needs to be consistent.

The sites have a licence requirement to report, I suspect they are non-compliant today due to lack of guidance. That non compliance is potentially enough to lose a licence but the UKGC woud not be able to do that and stand a judicial review without issuing guidance, warnings and potentially site specific licence requirements detailing what they need from those failing first. They do have the power to get the info, they also have the power to pull a licence for not reporting/enforcing/preventing.

2) Compensation - UK precedents

Without boring you with the individual cases of Money Laundering, faulty game software and the like the UK regulator position tends to be that they make sure that the operator makes no money from licencing failings like failure to prevent cheating. They make the operators work out what they made and pay that. That tends to be to two lots of people - first the UKGC likes to get it's investigation costs paid for by the operator then the rest goes to gambling research and treatment charities as an additional contribution from the operator - they really don't like them making a penny, indeed in most cases the figure agreed is a bit harsh on the operator, the high estimate.

For poker cheating this attitude is potentially a big plus for player compensation, instead of just funds seized and all rake would need to go to players affected, they might also demand an operator contribution not just for fairness reasons but to make foreign prosecutions easier.

3) Prosecution - UK & Overseas

Proecution is slow and expensive. One decent sized case could run to two years and half a million for the UKGC (from a £15m budget!) so they are VERY reluctant to prosecute Even when the NCA and CPS do most of the work (assuming they can be motivated) it is still a big hit to the regulator.

Think of the Svenska Spel bot case, nearly half a million dollars in compensation paid, arrests made, charges laid but still the botters are yet to get to court.

The good news is they have the powers. Cheating is up to two years in gaol. That means that a European Arrest Warrant would play for anywhere in the EU and it means that with probable cause they could get a warrant to kick the doors and take the computers as evidence.

They also have the ability to pass details of offenders to other gegulators/prosecutors so they could tell the Russkies who it is and try to encourage them to kick the doors too, no doubt many will be wrapped up in other fraud, identity theft, hacking stuff too and the Russkies are anti gambling enough that they moght want to punish a few fraudulent gamblers for their own political reasons. Personally I wouldn't fancy a Russian cell.

The powers are there, the spirit is almost willing but the flesh is weak.

4) Getting Action

I'm asking the UKGC to issue clearer warnings to players and cheaters that prosecution is possible. Not just to deter but as a way to lock them in to. This would be in the form of some UKGC briefing/leaflet for online players and revisions to the TOS of UK regulated poker sites so that the sites have to warn about the data sharing and risk of prosecution.

I'm also chasing them about getting a proper poker cheating reporting system setup, as outlined above so that they and we can get a better handled on the scale of the problem

I also keep telling them that they need to prosecute - piss or get off the pot - if they are serious about cleaning up online poker and protecting players they need to make some arrests.

The logjam is UKGC resource and this is where sites and Amaya should step up. Cheating undermines the whole industry, their entire marketing strategy, the whole business. For years they have let it slide, hoping that nobody notices, that the problem is seen as small or unimportant, instead it has got worse. My advice to Stars and others is to set up a UKGC fighting fund for prosecuting/investigating cheats. Instead of Stars just spending "millions" on their game integrity unit flash a bit of cash to give their game integrity team some teeth. Get a door kicked and a few arrests.

I suspect a quick £50k paid up to the UKGC to help them act would do wonders for the morale of their game integrity team. Let them know that instead of seizing a few dollars from an account they are going to be able to get a door kicked, their hands on the botters kit to assist the investigation and a few arrests made.

It's time for Stars and the UKGC to act.

these bots have the highest winrates which means they are taking the fish's money quickly.

Very insightful information Richas. Thanks for taking a moment to put that together.

Just a quick one. Does anyone regulate the regulators?

For an indusrty worth ~$6billion in gross annual revenue to providers.... the points you make are just astounding hear. Time to write to parliment imo.

Agree to a point. But these bots and I don't know if OP has taken this in to the equation as of yet is the alledged 'Bots' get Rake back & other bonuses as I'm assuming sergeaxx and fedorsayev are supernova plus.

I'm not sure how much rake back they get for SN+. Ok got results. They get $43,000 in Stella rewards plus a $5200 WCOOP main event entry on reaching 1,000,000 VPP's = 5,000,000 FPPs
They get $100,400 for reaching SN+ and if they continue as a SN+ player every month they get between 62-68% rake back averaging $124,400 per 1,000,000 VPP's on top of exchanging your 5,000,000 FPP's for maximum value = $80k

Now weird that some of these players have not played a tourney even being given free tourney tickets as a SN+ or gaining maximum value for their 5,000,000 FPPs and buying tourney entries = $80,000 and these can be traded.
All the free rolls are added to this perk with $1,000,000 every 3 months for SN+ prize pool. $100,000 free roll every month to play for and $30k per week to play for.

I'm sure in the UK only as they tax pokerstars extra that a UK supernova get slightly less than any other country but we don't pay any personal taxes in the UK on gambling. So it's swings and roundabouts and pokerstars have the promotion scheme about right.

Ok OP i won't tell you how to suck eggs as you've done a great job so far and I'll leave you with the benefits these 'Alleged Bots' get on top of their winnings.

Good luck all at the felt and if you are a bot then

1101 1100 1110 1111 meaning stuff you in binary

Excellent stuff and well said.ty Richas and apologies earlier in the week to you for being rude.

PokerStars Game Integrity team got in touch with me, asking for help. I have provided them with an extremely efficient way of flagging accounts that might be a part of this botting ring. I am not going to share it here.

I am quoting part of my email to PokerStars about this method.

"I dint get any false positives for this botting ring and all the suspected accounts got flagged (min hands>10K). While this stat is useless for finding botters in general its super usefull for finding botters from this particular ring.

Make this case your top priority now, people are freaking out and for a good reason. Its worth your time to read all my posts in the 2+2 thread, some valuable information over there. I will provide additional evidence as soon as I find it. I trust you guys to do the right thing."

Awesome, Schwein! Hopefully now the botters also start freaking out and not just legit regs

The UKGC reports to the UK government via the Department of Culture, Media and Sport - they have a new cabinet minister and a new minister with responsibility for gambling that have just been appointed. Unfortunately the DCMS has a huge turnover of ministers, it is seen as a stepping stone to bigger things and a way to try out new ministers (both of the new ones were backbenchers so untried).

The UKGC is deliberately setup to be independent though, to advise ministers on policy and implement policy agreed by the minister as an arms length organisation, they have civil service terms and conditions for employment but it is fully funded by the operators licence fees.

Not sure that answers your accountability question but the UKGC is subject to judicial review on everything it does, they can be taken to court, even the European Court. They have to act reasonably and have to consult fully.

That's OK I can be arrogant opinionated SOB sometimes.

wrong, pokerstars does lose instead of winning in longrun. Even if the all play sne. And even if bots does never get busted.