If you are playing a lot you should have no problem with any extra security because cleaning up the games is the most important. Like I said, there are times where I play a lot and if I have to play in front of a webcam so be it. I just want the scum out of the games.

At this point the only reason for them not applying some of these measures going forward (we should give them a little time but not much to implement) is they don't want to lose the rake. I guess we will see how much they care about the players

This post originally stated that WPN was going to be hosting a stream.
Why was that edited out?

+1 good question

+2

WPN rep we can take your comments about bots seriously for obvious reasons. Along these lines, starting out the topic with “bots are a problem everywhere in online poker” is a weak deflection

Did Chase thunder scared him away?

I was looking forward to this stream

Phil must still be traveling, this was the excuse a week ago. Smart phones and internet are hard to come these days.

Ive been thinking about this, and I kinda see it as a no win situation for WPN. I think it's blatantly obv they either dont care or cant fix the problems, let alone make it up to the player base what they've done. Gaining trust again going forward seems like a monumental task. For them not to acknowledge it and just wait for it to blow over would probably make the most sense from their end. Hopefully the "adults in the community" as somebody put it can get to the bottom of this. I also wonder where they get their new players who are depositing, honestly I've got no idea? twitch streams and poker media advertising but that's another subject.

The way to win is to own the failure.

"I haven't done enough with security. Not enough investment, not enough transparency, not enough listening to players. I'm going to work my ass off to improve security. Here's how..."

I second that KP.

yes very good point and I agree, that would go a very long way with the player base. Assuming the actions backed up the words. I feel like a dolt after reading the reply to my post I quoted, but in my defense the possibility of what KP posted didn't even enter my mind. I was being results oriented and overlooking standard fundamentals, basically leveled myself.

You're good, man.

No right or wrong. You opened the door for discussion. That's great.

Have any accounts been banned in the past two weeks and has WPN taken any action against cheaters since this post and the one previously.

I took WPN Rep's statement at face value and reported some Ukranian accounts I suspected of collusion/botting, got an email back, and at least one of those accounts has moved up in stakes with me.

As far as I can tell, since 2016 has yet to make themselves the most "bot unfriendly" place on the internet, per Phil Nagy's promise that year.


And I don't see any changes in suspect players at the tables when I log on.

Never playing on America's Cardroom again.

The SNG bots I posted about are still going this week. I know this forum has a lot of hate for WPN right now including myself. I know most have little faith they will right their wrongs but I myself remain neutral on that. I can verify that they HAVE banned SNG bots last year at one point, but I believe they have a skeleton of a security team who is very incompetent. I genuinely think some people involved with WPN give a damn, so I'll remain hopeful for the future.

I'd just like to draw some attention to the bots that I know were banned last year as proof that WPN has actually did something in the past. (can look at these guys on sharckscope, they all stopped playing at the same time).

Cocodora
hotfaceman
Panicking
Maria_Pia
Royalbeetle
Kindsoul

Likely banned:
La_dindon
fini5hHim

This post isn't to defend WPN because their stance on this has been absolutely pathetic. But there might be a light at the end of the tunnel where this is the first time the poker community has caused an uproar about the bots on this site. WPN obviously doesn't have enough employees so it isn't to my surprise that if they were going to do something like hire competent security people, it would take some time.

One positive to take away from this thread is that for the first time ever to my knowledge, a WPN rep acknowledged that bots are a problem and didn't deny they are on WPN.

Has anyone received refunds for being affected by the sng bot rings that were banned or the hyper collusion ring that was also banned last year? Even sites like bovada divide the money confiscated from cheating rings up among the affected players.

Does anyone know the WPN policy for this?

Highly doubt it. If I were to receive compensation for amount of times I've played bots it'd easily be in the 4 figures.

I never recieved any refunds for games I played against accounts that were confirmed to be colluding when DoNs were running so I don't see why this case would be any different.

Now let's talk about really empowering the players. If this is really something WPN wants to do let's get a small group of high profile, highly respected players to work hand and hand with WPN on security issues and this group can report back to the players to let us know how WPN is handling things.

WPN could also have a thread in this forum specifically for accounts that have been banned and can be updated every week. We don't need specifics, just account names that players can see are no longer playing. This will give players confidence something is being done.

Right now WPN operates with zero transparency and therefore zero accountability. Let's change this.

Some very good ideas there CastleFrank.

I have a theory. And let me just preface this by stating that I have zero evidence for this, and I'm not necessarily suggesting that this IS happening, I just wanted to share on this thread the hypothetical possibility that WPN hired the accounts behind the bots.

What they would get out of it:

- Their own accounts winning the Beast and SNC bonus money, funneling it directly back to the site, but they can claim it as losses

- Forcing real players to put in more volume to compete for the bonuses

- Taking the money from recreational players. If the recs are going to lose
their money, it might has well be to them, and not regulars

- Creating traffic on the site to bring in more traffic (essentially prop players that we don't realize aren't actual players)

- Helping to hit guarantees (or at least get close) in multi-tourneys. If there
were significant overlays regularly, it would become suspicious if they kept
offering them long term without adjustments.

Other benefits I'm not thinking of???

Again, I'm not saying that I think this is happening. But rationally, there would be a great incentive for WPN to create bots for their own site. And considering the absolute 0 transparency behind their methods and their "security" department, players would have no way to prove it, and would sound like tinfoil hatters (like I may be coming off as). Especially if the bots are all from Eastern Europe, so WPN would geographically have plausible deniability.

Feel free to flame away. Are there obvious things that I'm not thinking of that makes my theory provably false and totally ridiculous? Please let me know if I'm being a ****ing idiot for even thinking of this.

I'm not a regular in the internet subforum but those who know me on 2p2 can vouch that I'm a pretty rational and level headed dude overall. It's just something I was toying around with in my mind recently.

I know I and I think several others have had similar theories about many sites. I don't believe there is any way to prove it without someone that knows the inner workings of the network coming out and saying that this is what is happening. If such a thing was happening and found out it would likely be pretty damaging to the company. I think it's more likely that the sites just overlook it for the rake benefits of their volume until there is enough of a public outcry. Then they remove the most blatantly obvious cheaters that get the most complaints. Not too much later some more suspicious accounts will pop up to take their place. The cycle then keeps repeating.

Even though it's a slippery slope I don't have much of an issue with table starter bots. One per table until it's filled and then they should leave. This is probably a much cheaper solution than paying props.

What's actually happening at many of these networks is tables regularly have multiple bots on them for very long sessions. I think the sheer amount and the amount of maintenance it would take make it less likely that sites could be running that many bots even if they did run some. I also regularly read the bot forums and see how much traffic they get.

Some of them are configured to be very good and are being distributed and purchased a lot these days. They have solid GTO, as we currently understand it, balance and lack obvious exploitability. It takes a deep understanding of GTO to beat them for anything decent and still unlikely to be profitable to play against them after rake considerations. They also never tilt.

Never mind the fact that humans are getting better at the game and the other software that people are using these days, but when you throw a bunch of these bots into the mix it makes it extremely difficult for anyone to win at a good rate and move up the stakes which is what we all hope to do.

Unless i missed it regarding the captcha feature, what happens next once a player uses it? I reports the suspected account to security? If so how exactly is this different than a player emailing them about a suspect account? If anything would this not make an even bigger problem for the security team due to the influx of reports this would create?

But let's pose this question first to WPN. This was a thread entitled empowering the players. Well where have the reps been in this thread? Let's get an actual discussion going here and maybe some progress can be made.

I agree. This thread is exactly a week old, and besides the original post, the WPN rep has posted twice in here. Both times were just thank you for the post I am looking into it type responses as well.

I understand things in any industry don't move super quickly, but if you are going to start a thread about this topic, you would think that the rep would actually engage the players who take the time to respond with ideas and suggestions.

Once an account solves a captcha, they must be human. And... that's about the extent of security.

No, I think Frank was saying once a player puts a Captcha on another player and the other player doesn't respond to it (presumingly proving that they're a bot), what's the next step in getting rid of them? Does the first player send a report to the security team? If so, then there would be a ton of messages from players, overwhelming the security department (which like totally exists).

Please let us see the hole cards after please