Massive bot ring on PokerStars/Party and how to spot them - Page 32 - Small Stakes Pot Limit Omaha

Large team but looked as if some of the integrity team were playing poker? I know it's part of the testing and they said most of the integrity team are poker players with a good understanding of poker.
Poker players are all gamblers and it's fair to say want to make money fast.
It would be a much better idea to get a few independent statisticians with no interest in gambling who would have zero problem adjusting to the gambling environment. I have offered my own services but I'll wait and see what happens.
Most notable statisticians and mathematicians and me included worked in research for the UK government for many years and money does not motivate us by working as a civil servant for the government in research as the salaries we receive is pretty awful compared to the public sector employing us. When working for the government the pressure is off for us to have less deadlines or commercial pressure to hurry up deadlines. I stayed in the civil service because of the amount of learning opportunities I learnt for free at the time and studying up to PhD level was a bonus. I know work in the public sector for a large company of solicitors preparing evidence for or against complex fraud cases.

My thanks to the OP and Schwein and Richas et Al for all the hard work you are doing or have done and lets all wait for the answer to the cheating scandal.

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06-12-2015 , 07:37 AM

#777

potbet

enthusiast

Join Date: Nov 2011 Posts: 51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dandan160808

Well it's the barest I've seen PLO $1/2 and $2/4 in a very long time

i thought you do not look at those stakes but your wife does

anyway the action on midstakes is as usual at this time of the day. 1 table 3/6, 3 tables 2/4 and 2 tables 1/2 running atm is nothing special.

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06-12-2015 , 08:28 AM

#778

Dandan160808

centurion

Join Date: Sep 2013 Posts: 135

Of coarse I have to look at those stakes to see what she's talking about. Are you saying that as I don't play those stakes that I can't back my own wife's experience up?

95% of poker I play is live and I've played a lot of online poker on all sites in the past. I'm the mathematician in the family and without my input on analysing her stats and suspected bots then she'd have a very weak case.

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06-12-2015 , 08:34 AM

#779

ESKiMO-SiCKNE5S

What SN is this?

Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 29,325

Just starting to go through this thread now. Wanted to just say thanks to those doing the investigative work.

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06-12-2015 , 08:35 AM

#780

kelnel

veteran

Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 2,718

Quote:

Originally Posted by kelnel

I strongly agree with joeri's post about the rake made by stars because of the bots and have sent the following mail to stars:

Spoiler:

Will post if I get an answer

Got a disapointing answer:

Spoiler:

Hello Philippe,

Thank you for contacting us. Your email was escalated to me as a member of the PokerStars Game Integrity Team.

We are aware of the online discussions alleging a group of accounts to be operating poker bots. Please rest assured that we do not tolerate such activity on PokerStars. We have an extensive arsenal of detection tools in order to ensure that each player is a human being and playing without the use of prohibited programs.

Firstly, we note that the discussions include a list of accounts that are assumed to have been closed due to lack of recent activity. We can confirm that a number of these accounts have indeed been closed for violations of our Terms of Service, but this does not hold true for every account mentioned. Due to our strict privacy policy, we are unable to disclose User IDs in the context of fraud, nor offer comment as to why accounts we might have previously investigated may not have any recent activity.

As for the numerous active accounts mentioned, we do understand the concerns surrounding their playing statistics. Our access to all hand histories on PokerStars allows us to analyse any similarities in playing statistics between these accounts, as well as every other account. However, similar playing statistics alone is not sufficient proof wrongdoing, and we must do our due diligence to ensure that the correct resolution is reached. Our investigation includes, but is not limited to, reviewing their software and playing environments, how they interact with the PokerStars client, as well as analysing their activity in real-time and conducting Turing tests.

At this time, we are unable to provide further comment on this case as the investigation is still ongoing. Nevertheless, please rest assured that we are keeping track of player feedback, including opinions surrounding any compensation which may be due. We are doing our utmost to investigate this matter thoroughly in order to reach the correct resolution, and we will strive to ensure that any players deemed to have been harmed by unfair play are offered fair and appropriate compensation.

We kindly ask for your patience while we thoroughly investigate this matter. We also recommend that the identities of suspects be reported to us directly, not only to avoid slandering potentially innocent players, but also to avoid tipping off potential offenders. If you have any further information to provide regarding this matter, we will take it into consideration.

We will contact you with further details as soon as we are able.

Regards,

Ian Y
PokerStars Game Integrity Team

Cliffs:

Me: What is your stance on the rake you've made on unfair games (not just these games you are investingating now, but all time)?
PS: Thank you for your opinion, it will be taken into account.

Cliffs of cliffs: they did not answer.

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06-12-2015 , 08:42 AM

#781

AnotherMakiavelli

old hand

Join Date: Apr 2013 Posts: 1,451

maybe it helps to look at other games that have been solved. for example backgammon. afaik the online sites use tools like snowie to compare the moves a player makes with the optimal move. they also know how good a human pro plays. the pro will make a certain amount of mistakes over time. if a bot is playing perfect backgammon it will raise some flags. this requires however, to know the perfect play.

i don't know how this is handled for online chess, should be interesting because chess is even easier to solve. and we all know how deep blue beat kasparov back in 1997.

doing analysis like schweini did, to find certain patterns is probably the best option for now, beside of other detection methods like process monitoring (as it is done in counterstrike for example with VAC running on the system with system privileges to find known cheats).

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06-12-2015 , 08:43 AM

#782

Loctus

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 11,156

^That's an exact copy/paste of the reply I got (from a completely different support person)

edit: In response to kelnel

edit2: AnotherMakiavelli: Chess is not played online for money since it would just be bot/computer vs bot/computer every game. AFAIK neither is Backgammon for the same reason.

Last edited by Loctus; 06-12-2015 at 08:46 AM. Reason: .

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06-12-2015 , 09:06 AM

#783

AnotherMakiavelli

old hand

Join Date: Apr 2013 Posts: 1,451

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loctus

at least backgammon is definitely true. i have a friend living of that, playing the fifties and it's a nice profitable job

at least it was like 2 years ago. i should ask him what's up now! with chess you are right

dead

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06-12-2015 , 09:11 AM

#784

AnotherMakiavelli

old hand

Join Date: Apr 2013 Posts: 1,451

there is some hope, i found this site where you can play chess for money!

but i had to google a while, found one site that is not active anymore and so on.

https://www.topchess.com/

i don't know what security precautions they have in place. they claim it is ultra-advanced.

Last edited by AnotherMakiavelli; 06-12-2015 at 09:26 AM.

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06-12-2015 , 09:35 AM

#785

sirin

old hand

Join Date: Mar 2011 Posts: 1,995

The more I think about it, the more I feel like accusing stars of mere incompetence is putting it too lightly.

If, as seems to be the case, stars keeps all the rake they make from the bots, and only refunds players some % of the money that the bots make, then they are directly profiting from the existence of the bots, so while they may not be actively encouraging them, they have a financial incentive to at the very least not try their hardest to catch them.

This is a moral hazard that would surely be of interest to regulators.

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06-12-2015 , 10:15 AM

#786

CocteauTwin

old hand

Join Date: May 2010 Posts: 1,612

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schwein

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.

Raging. RIP online poker.

Amazing work Schwein, if it weren't for efforts like yours where would we be!

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06-12-2015 , 10:18 AM

#787

MastaAces

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 10,004

Quote:

Originally Posted by CocteauTwin

Raging. RIP online poker.

Amazing work Schwein, if it weren't for efforts like yours where would we be!

on pokerstars playing cards?

great work, guys!

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06-12-2015 , 10:27 AM

#788

CocteauTwin

old hand

Join Date: May 2010 Posts: 1,612

Quote:

Originally Posted by apo5tol

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.

Thing is, after the Chinese, Russians are the second biggest cheaters, Stars said it themselves, and thought what to do about it. (I'm not a hater, lots of friends of mine are ruski and I speak it to a degree)

There can actually be a "culture" of cheating...like the chinese ended up segregated. Yeah it feels dirty to say it and innocent people caught up in the mix say it's all racist. I think 100% Stars wont segregate Russia though, but they have been faced with an issue similar to that of the Chinese rings.

I think there should be a return of PTR publicly again, for whatever negatives there were to it before there's so many more reasons to bring it back. If there wasn't RU PTR around what would people do?

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06-12-2015 , 10:41 AM

#789

Tornano

stranger

Join Date: Jun 2015 Posts: 5

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirin

This can be solved easily by the regulator. Just make stars responsible for the financial dmg cheaters do to honest players.

Does anybody now if there are strong long term winning players left at plo50 if u discount the cheating accounts?

Last edited by Tornano; 06-12-2015 at 10:53 AM.

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06-12-2015 , 11:07 AM

#790

Jajajaja

adept

Join Date: Aug 2014 Posts: 850

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirin

I am on my phone so i cant link the post, but Kanu made a post in msnl saying that Stars does not only redistribute the funds that are in the cheaters account. Meaning if the cheater cashed out, stars pays out of there pocket the difference to the players.

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06-12-2015 , 11:42 AM

#791

ihopeyouwin

grinder

Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 614

Can we follow up on iPoker please? I think Schwein needs more hands.

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06-12-2015 , 12:23 PM

#792

freewilly12

journeyman

Join Date: Sep 2011 Posts: 301

Quote:

Originally Posted by ihopeyouwin

Can we follow up on iPoker please? I think Schwein needs more hands.

I exposed an iPoker PLO botring about half year ago.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...twork-1484699/

Ipoker seems to tolerate botting so very slim chance to get them banned there.
Allthough good to know who's who.

Last edited by freewilly12; 06-12-2015 at 12:32 PM.

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06-12-2015 , 12:41 PM

#793

delek12

enthusiast

Join Date: May 2015 Posts: 91

Quote:

Originally Posted by freewilly12

found very similar players to the ones you mention playing as low as PLO20. Ragtime84 comes to mind and Anarkii99 was also playing at that limit...will try to provide more names if needed

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06-12-2015 , 01:01 PM

#794

DaFooFighter

centurion

Join Date: Mar 2013 Posts: 159

Not sure if anyone already posted about this but those "nice" people have a place to discuss this topic and do it very freely for a few years now. Link to forum: http://poker-ai.org/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=26

Also a quote from one of the sub forums

I hope someone with more time on his hands can look into it and share some interesting stuff. At this moment I can go so far to imagine that Poker Stars doesn't know about it at all...

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06-12-2015 , 01:16 PM

#795

Trife

journeyman

Join Date: Nov 2011 Posts: 257

Sickening this thread is, props to everyone who put in work to expose the cheating players.

Sorry if already asked, but can a similar thing be happening at NLHE as well ?

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06-12-2015 , 01:30 PM

#796

4-Star General

adept

Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 1,012

Why the users cannot be criminal prosecuted? Clearly I'm missing a piece of that...this could be fraud. Obv something is preventing the room to do so... what is it?

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06-12-2015 , 01:44 PM

#797

freewilly12

journeyman

Join Date: Sep 2011 Posts: 301

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trife

Sickening this thread is, props to everyone who put in work to expose the cheating players.

Sorry if already asked, but can a similar thing be happening at NLHE as well ?

There has been sophisticated botrings at NL for years:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/56...ngame-1112918/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...poker-1455008/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...-view-1474198/

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06-12-2015 , 02:02 PM

#798

viking1

adept

Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 907

I do not believe they are bots. Pokerstars has the best antibot software of all the pokersites. They would have picked up this a long time ago if they were real bots using automatic scripts.

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06-12-2015 , 02:04 PM

#799

ChicagoJoey

Papi

Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 15,464

I am going to have Sam Ganzfried on a podcast . He is the guy behind the Claudico bot. Going to discuss the PLO botting situation among other things. I'm sure he will have some unique insight into things. If anyone can give me some technical questions that will be GTO to ask let me know