Hello I open this new thread to see if there are more regular in the same situation as me, or someone has some kind of information.

My name is Rubén, I am a professional poker player from Spain, I live in Andorra and my nick at the tables is "fontainerot"

It all starts on October 5th, when I'm going to log in like every afternoon and I see that I have the account blocked. I open my email and had an e-mail from pokerstars saying this verbatim:

"Hello Rubén,

We are writing to advise you that your Account Stars have been frozen.
*
After an initial investigation, it appears that you may be using software which may be in breach of our Terms of Service.
*
Our rules on this issue are explained on our website:
*
www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/prohibited "

This was accompanied by several questions, about what software I used, how I had learned to play, lately I had made changes to my game ... etc etc

I at first did not take it too seriously, since I am a totally legal player, that NEVER has used any kind of software prohibited by PS. Then I answered the questions without elaborating too much, thinking it was their mistake and soon they would realize that I am a legal player and they would open the account again.

They spent the days and did not tell me anything about the investigation, and I started to worry a little, first because I could not work (spins I only played in PS.es and PS.com and had both blocked) and then because a lot of my bank got him there. Then I sent several e-mails requesting some kind of more concrete explanation of my case and offering me at all times to help prove my innocence. And until today (12 days have already passed) and I have only received empty answers, without giving me any information or possible resolution dates of my case.

In spite of the situation I am calm, because I repeat, I AM TOTALLY LEGAL, I have been playing spins 11 months (7 in 50s pokerstars .es and 5 playing 100s in Ps.com), I do not belong to any school, I use Pokertracker, Starshelper and SiqregSpin and the typical tables that all regular used to guide me preflop. In short, a CLEAN player.

So as the days go by and I do not find any logic to the situation, nor am I receiving any help or information from Pokerstars support, it has occurred to me to tell the case to see if anyone is in my situation or has any kind of information about it .

Sorry for my bad english translator

Have you made a video? How did you learn poker/were you playing on stars with 100% of your own action?

did u just start at 50s spins or play games previous to this?

No, I have not been able to make a video because they do not give me the option to open the account and to be able to record in a session explaining everything because I do.
Is that the treatment of Pokerstars is being unfortunate, hopefully let me collaborate with anything ... videos, photos, etc ... and to be able to prove my legality.

I played spins 50s € in pokerstars.es before going to live in Andorra and make the jump to 100s in pokerstars.com

what bot are you using?

For me it's a pride that someone thinks I'm a bot means that I'm doing things right. But I say again: I NEVER have used illegal programs, bots or anything like that. And it's been 15 days with the frozen account ...

so you just jumped into 50s without prior experience ?

Obviously I had experience, in my beginnings I played HU Hyper and then I was 2 years playing MTTs, until I met the spins.

well then you will have to wait for a response from stars

my question was more of a troll i dont even care if you actually bot tbh
biggest ripoffs are still the sites

did you use any program to open your preflop charts? did you send them the program?

Any update on this?

I do not use any program to open tables ... simply word and excell ...

Unfortunately, for me, I do not have any news ... I have been waiting for 22 days with the frozen account, trying to help them prove my legality and do not let me participate in the investigation. It is unfortunate the treatment I am having by the support, I have not stopped sending them e-mails to make them understand that I want to prove that I have never played illegally and the only thing I receive on their part are empty answers ...

Have heard a few other $100s regs also have their accounts frozen. And while I applaud Stars for doing their absolute best to rid the games of cheating/botting, I'm definitely concerned that some innocent people will get punished as a result.

Becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between a bot and a really good human, which is a big reason why I'm starting to make plans for a life/career that doesn't involve poker.

Don't know anything in regards to your case, but I hope PS solves the issue expediently.

Stars frozen me too
My nickname: FREEQ7Z
Have a blog on a biggest russian poker site "GipsyTeam.ru"
Have a 300K views, constantly 30-50 readers and 550 followers
I'm playing Spin and Go from very beginning
I posted a lot of vods in my blog, include Live Video for Stars
And what I want to highlight, none of the Polish of the player is not frozen
I make bet we all freezed because this biggest SmartSpin clan reporting one by one
Who prevents them to play, it's ****ing not fair at all
I will do the same after unfrezee, collect 50-100 russian/ukraine/belarus
Spin and Go players signatures and start reporting SmartSpin players who play "too good"
I cant play for a month already and not know how long
If they think they're so smart, they'll pay the same

Have you drastically changed something recently? Else to be honest I am a bit shocked stars have frozen your account for that, maybe it's something else?

why dont you post the entire email you received?

Nothing, my gamestyle slightly improved every month, but nothing drastic

I did challenge in my blog to play 10K games a month and completed it at Spin and Go 30$, earned a lot of EV and sidebet $
Took a month break and made a new
And was going to do 12.5K games a month and got a freeze on 8900 games
In my blog there is a live video how I play 10 tables for Stars investigation, my volume 80-90 games per hour, turns out I had to play only 140 hours
My challenges inspire a lot of people and at the same time it inspires me to continue
And also I had a penalty 4444$ if I don't play this distance + sidebets (more than 10K$)
Anyway, i'm not a huge spin and go crusher and hold on with winrate at 35-38 chipev at 60-100$ and 45-48 chipev at 30$

Also they ask me record a live video, this is only 2 emails i get and now what i can just wait and hope
All my answers you can read in my blog
This freeze really scared a lot of russian/ukraine and belarus players, because everyone know me, someone know personally, because i'm pretty often travel on live series like EPT/PSC

Entire mail while freeze me

Hello Dmitriy,

Your account is currently under review for possible violations of our Terms Of Service and has been temporarily frozen while we complete this review.

To assist us, we request that you answer the following queries:

Please explain in specific detail what you have done over the last year in terms of studying, coaching and anything to improve your poker game and advantage over your opponents. Particular details that must be included are:

- Deliberate changes in strategy or playing style implemented in our games;
- Software, tools and methods used to study;
- Software and tools used as you play on Stars;
- What is your current technical setup when accessing Stars;

Furthermore, we also like to request you to answer the following questions:

- Where do you access our site from? (home, office, etc)
- Did you receive assistance in setting up your computer? If so, please provide the details
- Did you personally create your account or did you receive assistance in doing so?
- Were you familiar with our client prior to creating your account? If the answer is yes, please explain how.
- Where did you learn how to play poker? Please also briefly explain your playing style.
- Do you use charts or any other reference material to assist your play? If so, please provide us with details and complete copies of them.
- While playing on our site, do you receive any kind of assistance on the appropriate action to take? If so, please provide the details.
- We've noticed numerous nuances with how you interact with our client. Is there anything unique in your setup that may have caused such observations?

Do you have any other information that you would like us to take into account?

We ask for a response within 48 hours. In the event that no response has been received within that time frame, we will take appropriate action without your contribution.

Regards,

George
Stars Game Integrity

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

Hello Dmitriy,

We require a video recording of your next playing session. This recording has a few mandatory requirements:

- This must be done during your next session, and you have 10 days to complete this task.

- At the beginning of the recording, we must be able to clearly see your face in order to confirm your identity.

- Before starting to play, you must rotate your camera 360 degrees to show us all of your surroundings.

- You must start your playing session from an empty computer desktop, whereby you initiate our client and log into your account.

- After logging in, you must play a regular session of yours.

- Your playing session at the tables must be for a minimum of 70 active minutes.

- The recording must be from over your shoulder such that your head and hands are visible at all times. Please make sure that the lighting in the room is adequate for this to be possible.

- Audio must be included in the recording.

- During your play at the tables, the recording must be of sufficient quality to see and track the activities that are taking place on your desktop. In addition, the recording must capture your surrounding environment including your monitor, keyboard and mouse.

- You must minimise the amount of individual video files. Longer, continual recordings are preferred.

It is important that your playing session is conducted in the same manner as one of your typical sessions as your tendencies will be contrasted with your regular play.

You must supply the resulting recording to us via email. In the likely event the files exceed attachment limits, please utilise file sharing services such as Dropbox, Google Drive or whichever service you prefer. We'll largely leave this option up to you.

Failure to follow these instructions or if the video is of subpar quality, will result in this task needing to be repeated.

Regards,

Andrew
Stars Game Integrity

If the freezes are because smarspins guys its very unfair, i play with you guys and you both has very different styles.

Fontaneirote, can you paste your mail too?

played with FREEQ72 alot he stayed low stakes for ever and moved up gradualy, if botting or using software sure hed of hopped right up to the hundos or 60s seems wierd, maybe there just banning big winners now, seems standard amaya, thats what bookies do, GG winning bettors accouts or limit them

Why do you think the freezes are because of polish stable players? That seems quite presumptuous without any additional information.

Liked this Thread and would like to share my thoughts on many aspects of the game...

1. As for your case fontainerot, It's true that many regs are frozen unfairly by stars but I don't think that's the case for you. Your playing style is very close to GTO, you came in 100s from nowhere and you don't mention in your posts that you used PioSolver in order to improve. There is no way you play that way without having Pio experience and the fact that you don't mention it shows you have something to hide...

2. Im 90% sure that there is a connection between Stars and SmartSpin. Undoubtedly Polands are the worse regs at 100s and I see almost all of them making good chEV e.g. Ytrer and I wonder how is that Possible, also through my experience playing with them 9/10 times when I reach HU with them I end up being sentenced to lose EV from them with all the possible ways. Also almost all of them have at least once won a 200x at 100s. If you take into account that you need 1/55.000-60.000 games to get a 200x and win it tell me how is that possible? Number don't lie as CR7 says... Also Smartspins have the biggest protection from stars, they undoubtedly share Databases-best hours and nothing happens... Need anything else??

3. If you talk about spins fraud the biggest fraud out there are Russians. Russians have been using bots for many years before and they are somekind of mafia in that. I have seen many old recreative Russian players suddenly becoming GTO multiT regs, also many new Russian accounts that suddenly started crushing 100s. Where is stars protection from that?? If it takes stars 3-4 months in order to bar an account then actually there is no protection. Remember the case of Samar3egg at HU 1000s who was 100% bot, everyone had reported him and stars bared him after one year... That's Stars protection and integrity system...

4. I am really disappointed that I see many regs like abarone and Watergun that report every new Reg that they see reaching 100s without having analyzed their game before and concluded they use a bot. I know everyone wants to get rid of as many regs as possible, but that isn't the fair way. Many regs have lost their account without having any conflict with bots just because the conspiracy of 100s have reported them. Basically it's almost impossible for someone to climb from 30s or 60s at 100s without his account getting frozen (except for SS).

5. The fact that Stars relies so much at other regs reports in order to freeze and ban people is really sad. I wonder how is it so hard to hire 2-3 top 100s regs with GTO and Hud analysis knowledge, give them full access at DB and let them do job. If you check the emails from ppl getting frozen and see the things that the integrity group asks, its 100% obvious that these people are totally useless and have no knowledge about spins or maybe Poker in general. Stars can't guarantee protection from bots or doesn't want to guarantee protection, im 100% sure about that.

To summarize all my thoughts, 100s stake nowadays has become somewhat like a cartel stake. And off course Stars integrity team is miles away from becoming truly undisputed.

Iv played like 25k spins, hit 2 200x and 2 100x, nothing to do with my cousin working for pokerstars tho

I would like to respond to some of these claims. I was a former reg in spins on Stars at 100s, and played some other games from time to time. Through some recent developments I now work for Pokerstars Game Integrity. Anything I post on 2p2 are all my personal opinions/takes on things, as stars doesn't have an official 2p2 account for Game Integrity.

Yes, I did report many players over the last year or so, and this picked up after August this year (for obvious reasons). But I have never reported a new account without any serious thought/investigation. My reports were always extensive, and usually involves a lot of google search and various other IRL stuff. Believe me- I have analysed the hhs of every player I reported using the best tools available. I have never tried to report ppl in order to benefit my own bottomline by getting rid of my opponents, and have lost $EV reporting as it really took a lot of time.

When you send reports to pokerstars, especially as a well informed regular (rather than fish reporting top 2 players in an mtt if they are from the same country), unfortunately a lot of the time they cannot respond in a satisfactory manner. They cannot reveal their methods of detection, cannot reveal whether the person has been investigated already, and cannot reveal if someone is about to be banned anyway. Thus most of the time you will receive a template response. It may seem like stars don't know what they are doing, but there are a lot of tools to catch cheats these days, with more to be developed. I'm prob saying too much here, and won't be able to say much more.

Also the emails sent to ppl frozen are typically template emails as well. It's just easier this way so as not to slip up in a response and give away info for our detection methods/privacy stuff on other player accounts.

I won't be answering further questions about my/stars' work. If you do have questions, feel free to send it in to support.