jackpots 100% yes, sng2.0's most likely not since WPN is the only one that offers them and they don't get much traffic it wouldn't make sense to develop bots for them, yet..

it later occurred to me that the normal 9handed sng bots would most likely work for sng2.0 they just wouldn't adjust for the different payouts. Not sure how that would effect their profitability but I'd guess they would function.

I agree with this

1. Hire an independent 3rd party company for security. I seem to recall one that advertised in the 2+2 forums. It doesn't have to be them, but at least a company with a solid reputation. Preferably they should have a strong background in poker data analysis. They should be able to recognize irregularities such as identical statistics and analyze players who play high volume against/with each other. Do their winrates dip when not playing together and vice versa?

2. High scrutiny for high risk accounts.(High volume, multiple player complaints, identical statistics to other accounts, odd behavior, etc.) These players should be subjected to regular captcha, webcam and data analysis.

3. Captcha should always be done at random times and never at scheduled intervals. If players can captcha each other it needs to be done so that it's not abused.

4. ID and residence verification on first deposit with any currency and then at random times going forward.

5. Public list of banned accounts that is shared with all of the network skins. Banned on one skin, banned on them all.

6. Compensation for being cheated.

7. Fix common exploits such as the MTT late reg and stall issue.

8. Ability to see mucked showdown cards.

9. VPN detection.

10. Allow for more open communication with the community. Be more transparent with the people who pay to play there.

very nicely done sir ^

TY netgod. I don't even play here that often, but I'd be more inclined to if those measures were implented. Their reputation has taken a big hit. Imagine the amount of good faith they'd instill in the poker community if they put those in place asap. They could certainly do it if they cared. I'm not sure they do as evidenced by how bad they let it get despite the regular complaints.

I haven't put a lot of thought into this, so there may well be an obvious flaw that I haven't considered, but...

Rather than eliminating sit n crush / beast type promotions, and rather than forcing webcam inspections as some sort of barrier to entry. Why not just make a thorough webcam inspection a semi annual requirement to qualify for any type of rakeback, whether it is "the beast", "sit n crush" or just the standard "27%". No one is forced to do a webcam inspection, but if you don't do a webcam inspection, then you qualify for no rakeback of any kind. A few extra sentences in the current "terms and conditions" governing the promotions would be all that is required to implement this.

This cuts deeply into the hourly of bots, as they only get "paid" the money that they can actually win from their respective game types. Therefore, the more money they desire to "win", the more exposure to detection they must face.

There is no barrier to entry, as most rec's never qualify for any type of rakeback promotion anyway. And the few rec's who do qualify occasionally, or who know to "sign up for rakeback before creating their account" are serious enough about the games to understand the reasoning behind the webcam inspection. Especially if they aren't subjected to the inspection, until after they've won a promotional prize.

You could even include the time and date of the last webcam inspection that an account was subjected to within their profile, or give them a "badge" displayed on the table for passing the inspection. Rec's tend to love those sorts of things, for some reason. But these things would make it much easier for everyone to determine who might be a bot and who almost certainly isn't a bot.

So where is the flaw in this type of system that makes it worse than the current system?

Great post MCAChiTown. I think you could add that WPN should freeze all active Eastern Europe/Russia accounts that are not verified as well until they are verified. This will probably deter a decent amount of bot activity.

I think the bot detection people you were talking about is SafePoker.
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...=bot+detection

Allow me to retract part of my previous statement because I have little experience with the beast, while I still think what I said about it being easier if the bots are removed from the leaderboard has plenty of merit. SnC leaderboard is an absolute necessity though because it is regs that drive volume in SNG, being the oppposite of cash where recs drive volume.

Thrash is 100% correct. SNG would become a lot less active if you remove SitNCrush.

Sry for double post. The real problem with your post is that this assumes bots aren't super profitable without RB which is a very false thing to assume. The SNG bots have the highest ROI's and cash bots as far as I'm aware are crushing the games. Current day, the problem is not the reward system. The problem is game integrity and this needs to remain the focus. When you cut deeply into the hourly of bots, you cut deeply into the hourly of everyone else.

We as players can identify suspect accounts pretty easily majority of the time, so if WPN uses us we can work as a team to improve this awful situation.

I want to 'empower ACR' to look into the obvious without getting too sophisticated.

There have been 6 players shown to crash and collude into the money in MTTs. There have been three 'players' in PLO ring games that by any reasonable study appear to be bots. When those players are seated and appear to be doing what they are accused of, a different staff member calls each of them up at the same time. If all different voices answer, hahaha, ask them what game they are in, how many chips they have or their last to hands of hole cards. No answers, freeze their game play with a note they are to answer the phone on record immediately and you are calling them back.

Phones not answered or wrong answers given, freeze accounts, take their funds, and figure out a way to give it back to the player pool.

Also, make the skins that do not require verification be financially responsible for wrongdoing of their players. Probably a bit more than a coincidence that PokerKing is the home for many of these players. let them put up a security deposit that covers any fraudulent activity that occurs from their player base.

Low tech wizardry at its finest. These are two fixes that costs nothing to implement and would eliminate many of the accused accounts in no time. I'm a big fan/supporter of the site and the reps that are on 2+2. If staunch supporters are having confidence issues, there is an obvious problem.

I disagree, not with the general sentiment, but with what you've said about my idea. I certainly don't disagree with the fact that WPN needs to do far more than they've done so far. But...

I didn't assume that bots weren't crushing the games pre-rakeback, quite the contrary actually. I think while this idea doesn't make the bot a net loser, it certainly cuts into their hourly, and simultaneously makes them easier to identify. And I didn't try to imply that stopping them entirely wasn't a better solution. I only meant to say that this seems relatively easy to implement, and it's better than what we have now. Also, it helps in your crusade to team up in a coordinated effort, as it becomes much easier to see who isn't a bot, and who might be a bot.

Saying that it cuts into everyone's hourly is just plain wrong, it doesn't cut into the hourly of anyone who isn't cheating and is willing to pass the webcam verification, in fact it increases the hourly of the proven human players who don't cheat, by not paying sit n crush or beast money to bots and delivering it to actual humans who have passed the inspection requirement.

I'm assuming here that when an unverified account finishes 1st in the sit n crush promo for instance, but refuses the verification process, then that money gets paid to the 1st fairly played human account, and every other fairly played human account simply moves up in their finishing place. I don't assume that WPN simply keeps the money that has been thus far going to bots.

Except in the form of cash game rakeback that is currently being paid to bots, I'd think that this money would be substantial, and could go a long way toward covering the cost of implementing the webcam verification as well as other security checks that arise from identifying potential problems with the suddenly obvious high volume accounts that refuse webcam verification processes.

Not a horrible idea I just don't see it as practical. What happens when someone is webcam-confirmed? Botters could just verify the account through webcam and then start using bots. Monitoring thousands and thousands of "confirmed" accounts just doesn't seem realistic/cost-effective.

If I was a rec, and saw that I had to play on a webcam just to get rakeback, I'd be skeptical at the very least. This is 2018, most recs know what rakeback is. Not to mention the effort from a security team watching every reg on the site play for an hour to verify they aren't botting then comparing it to previous samples.

Not just previous samples, but also future samples, which solves your initial problem with verifying an account, and then turning it over to a bot. But this is something accomplished easily enough by a computer program, and once such software is up and running, it's pretty simple to maintain.

And as for account monitoring, it's not the "confirmed" or verified accounts that you need to spend time monitoring, assuming your verification process was thorough. The only accounts that need monitoring would be those that hadn't been verified. But even then, it's really only the unverified accounts that put in significant volume and win money, which need to be monitored. And you get the help of every single honest regular on your network to aid with "monitoring the unverified accounts", because everyone will be able to see which accounts have and have not been verified.

Admittedly, it would be a great deal of work to accomplish the initial round of verifications, as there would be many people trying to get verified at the same time. But once you've gotten through everyone who wants to be verified the first time, things get much easier to maintain from that point forward.

There are already many websites that require webcam ID verification for things like cryptocurrency exchanges and such. Like you said, it's 2018, this isn't something that no one has ever heard about before. It might not be known to everyone, but it's known to enough that no one should be skeptical of it to the point where it prevents people from signing up. The mere fact that you could advertise the process and thus your network as being the safest on the internet would easily bring in more people than the process scares away, imo.

I'm not really committed to this idea, I just think it's better than the current system, as I don't see the fatal flaw, though one might well exist. But so far I think it's a viable middle ground between things like random webcam verifications for only the accused, or no sit n crush / beast type promotions at all, or banning entire countries, or meaningless captcha nonsense that interferes much more with the play of an honest human regular than it does a bot, or keeping the status quo, etc.

I think WPN should integrate a function in their software that detects bots running, kind of like an antivirus progam. They should purchase the most used bots and add code in their software to detect these programs running and automatically close the client and or ban the account. Easy peasy.

Would be a massive win for everyone if WPN implemented these things.

+1

Some awesome suggestions on here

+1 on all of these...

WPN_REP, since you are essentially asking us to do your job, will you come work my 9-5? Please advise.

Let's be realistic, nothing will happen. THIS SITE STILL DOESN'T HAVE SHOWDOWN CARDS. Empower yourself, get off the cesspool.

Statisticians, data scientists, data analysts. You are sitting on a mountain of data. Do something with it or hire people that can.

What about something like table/player audits every once in a while, or when they think a player is a bot etc, where the table freezes and all players on the table have 30 seconds to be in front of their webcams which displays the players themselves, and also displays the keyboard and mouse their using; play resumes after the 30 seconds for another say 15 minutes, with webcam still focused on the players, their keyboards and mouses which are all being recorded.

So now they can compare the players mouse and key movements to their previous play while not being recorded, while also seeing if the player is looking to the side as in using some type of software.

So a player using more then one account while colluding at the same table couldn't do so as they would require to be in front of the webcam for each account.

And their mouse and keyboard movements wouldn't obviously match their previous play if they are bots while playing when not being recorded vs recorded.

As for privacy the recording of the player gets deleted after so many days but they keep and store the players keyboard and mouse movements while playing with and without the webcam recording.

You don't want to discourage people from playing by annoying them with having them jump through hoops to play poker. The only people that need to be subjected to anything extra are high risk accounts.

They can then maybe just freeze the table for that 15 second and audit only those players and play resumes.

That said I don't think recreational's will mind agreeing to having to own a webcam to play on their site if its explained to them why especially with the amount of botting and collusion going on.

Also this is not something that would be done every day or week but just when they think a player might be cheating or using a bot.

Your post is great in every aspect except for one point. Getting WPN to explain to customers why a webcam is needed in the first place. This thread is a perfect example of WPNs attitude towards fixing the problems. Unless they are willing to say out right that a problem exists then I have zero confidence that things will change. Everything they say is a spin to gloss over the issues which means they think we are stupid enough to buy their garbage. Real change will only begin once the network is upfront and truthful with its customers.

11. Security needs to monitor the bot forums. Most of them are not that hard to find. If the bot forum says the network is supported or they release an update for the network then security should be on high alert.


Thanks for the compliment and linking that thread! Unfortunately it doesn't look like they've posted since early 2017.

im doubtful anything will even happen if players don't fill the captcha

Nothing at all has been done about the plo bots and they were reported 3 months ago

This ^





I was thinking about the hassle it would be for recs but when you think about it its standard with most companies, for example i registered a account with coinbase in November and sent and uploaded ID like a few times and they still haven't approved the account, they did tho after two months reply to my email with the standard bs automated reply, account still not registered. I mean some of the exchanges are asking for selfies.


Regs think rec players just deposit and don't know about bots and collusion, but imo they just about all do. A lot of fun player friends i know will always say something like isn't it all rigged like you're playing vs a few guys sharing cards and bots. I bet if they done a survey i would bet good money that over 90% of fun players if not more would answer yes that they think players are cheating against them sometimes, and a reason a lot fo them don't play online.

I actually think if a fun player was playing and suddenly the table froze with a message saying we are just doing a random audit on players to protect them from collusion and bots, but word it differently like maybe not use the words bots and collusion but word it in a way players would think wow, this is good, at least i know I'm not playing against bots or players colluding against me, I mean with webcams implemented players simply wouldn't collude and use bots so these audits wouldn't be as i mentioned daily or weekly just when they think a player is colluding or using a bot.

anyway its just a suggestion