The large majority of the cheaters winnings have been withdrawn. We got a small fraction of what we deserved.

Anyone who is interested in assisting with this effort. Start taking notes on players using a google doc instead of GP. That way if/when one account disappears we still have access to the info.

I will ask again, what exactly was submitted to gp? I know somethings off but i can't begin to evaluate anything unless i take 100's of screenshots and review them which would be discredited for obv reasons, or am I supposed to shoot and submit/post 100+ hrs of videos of live play of 8+ tabling? Im not trolling Im asking for legit reasons and if Chicago Joey sees this please ask the CEO, and ill be posting a lot more in the "cj podcast thread" tomm for requests. Or if GP joey wants to answer here 1st that'd maybe be ideal?

I dont get why there isnt a very public/known list of the account names

I was one of the people involved in discovering the bot accounts. I was planning to stay silent for various reasons, but it seems like now is a good time to post so that misinformation isn't spread.

I was refraining from posting about the situation as long as Global handled it in a manner that was timely and fair. While we (the players who worked together on this) were frustrated with how long the investigation took from Global's end, we were reassured that it was being taken care of. All the while i was ready to go public with everything had the accounts not been banned and players not been refunded. However now that accounts are being named without substantial proof, i think it's important that I give a little clarity about the situation.

There were a total of 13 bot accounts discovered and banned spanning from .5/1 - 10/20.

The account names are: alime, bulletman, globalwarning, justjohn, koolio8, meister, NS00, showmedaewae, yabayaba, yario, yukonsam.


These bots were detected by a group of players, not Global security. If we hadn't reported these accounts I'm very confident they would all still be playing. What we were able to gather was irrefutable proof that these accounts were in fact bots, but near the end of the investigation the bot behavior changed and new accounts can no longer be identified the same way. I'm not going to provide any account names without proof, but i do believe new accounts are active. The accounts that Staysmacked mentioned: babalagutz, karatemunkey were not banned accounts. Additionally, grannynuts and survival of the fitness play different from the banned accounts. I'm not saying that these accounts can't possibly be bots, but i think it's extremely poor judgement to start listing names based on pure speculation.I think it's worth mentioning that Staysmacked was not part of the group of players who collected evidence on these accounts. I asked him to refrain from posting information publicly on how we're detecting these accounts, so that we can continue to do so, but he ignored that. While i'd like to tell everybody how to spot these accounts, I believe that by posting the information publicly i'll compromise the ability that we still have to gather evidence. Staysmacked is an example of why i think it's best to not be completely forthcoming about everything. He's very quick to jump to conclusions and says "it's pretty easy to tell within a few sessions if they're bots", yet only 1 out of 5 accounts he listed are confirmed bots.

It's clear that what we need is access to anonymous hand histories so that we can police the games. I suggest a system like bovada, where HHs are downloadable after a 24 hour period and show hole cards from every player. THis makes it much more possible to detect no only bots, but any sort of collusion.

With all that said, i don't want to come across as overly negative. Let's remember that Global is new to online poker and doesn't have the experience in dealing with these issues. Even still, they've handled the situation better than nearly any other existing poker site. They were receptive in dealing with the situation even though it seemed like they had limited capacity to detect the accounts, and they were fair to players by issuing refunds. It does seem like they're making an effort to really bolster their security around this situation, but it would be nice to hear it first hand.

I'll answer any questions that anybody has if i think it's in the best interest of everybody.

Yeah, everything Warder says is true. It's also true that global started responding to us before the events on ACR. We started sending evidence to global around late jan, and they responded saying they were going to investigate within several days.

Why did you post only 11 SNs?

That was actually a mistype on my part. There were actually 12 accounts banned and i forgot to include zhuvee.

Could you share game, stakes, format (6m/9m/hu), played by the bots, please?

this is sad. i thought bots relied on hand histories, so i assumed global was relatively clean. i've definitely played with a few of those :/

hope joey sees this thread and talks about it with his upcoming podcast

the bots played nlhe, playing anything from HU to full ring, from nl100 to nl2000.

I respect your efforts to help clean up the games but you're far from the first to investigate and send information over to Global on these bots. Anyone who played semi regularly with these accounts could pick up evidence of correlation. Yes these bots are sophisticated in that they can adjust and each play various styles, but it's nothing ground breaking to identify them.

The biggest problem that I have is wanting to keep this hush hush. Do you realize how much Global Poker charges players in rake? There is ZERO excuse why they shouldn't already have a competent tech team in place to prevent and protect their players from this. ZERO excuses. On top of that, when they remove things that help players identify this, such as hand histories access etc, the burden becomes placed back on them 10 fold to protect players from this. I understand why it may be in best interest to collect info and send it as not to tip off the bot makers, however, if Global doesn't actively step up with a task force in place, it'll only ever be the community policing this, etc. Global has more glitches and simple tech issues than any reputable site and we're expecting them to suddenly be heroes in preventing sophisticated bots? LOL.

Global faces an up hill battle, largely because they are a web based software, making it easier in many ways for bot makers. Stand alone applications can run patches, updates, etc to stay ahead, where Global doesn't have this advantage. There are tons of HUDs, bots, convertors etc on the deep web. Global should either start there to figure out a way to prevent this or even start on the mainstream obvious sites like pokerbot.com Hydra AI which supports Global.

At the end of the day, it's better to out the suspected accounts (if they're not bots, they shouldn't worry as they'll be free or can stand up for themselves). If we continue to let these accounts play, collect our evidence, send it to Global, wait 1-3 months for action, etc then we open up the bots to earn a ton of money off the community pool only to have the bot makers rinse and repeat. At best, we can out the suspected accounts, raise awareness, and let the community decide how they wish to proceed. When the bot creators tech team is > Global's team, awareness is all we can do to slow down the damage.

anyone else suspicious of autismispower?

100%. He was the one I forgot to add. Autism, survival, and granny.

Wow this was interesting to wake up to. Good job Global. I rag on you a lot for certain things but great job catching cheaters! And most thanks especially to those that brought them to Global's attention

Hi xxxxxxx,

Global Poker has become aware of a situation involving a violation of our Terms of Use, to the potential detriment of other players. You participated in games that were under consideration in this case and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

On an instance such as this it is our policy to confiscate the $weeps of the offender(s) and for Global Poker to distribute these where appropriate. This compensation pool is then distributed to players potentially affected in as fair a way as possible. As such, your GlobalPoker account has been issued with a compensation credit of $510.36 $weeps Cash.

The integrity of the games at Global Poker is of paramount importance and appropriate action will always be taken when players operate outside the Terms of Use.

We regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated. Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or player(s) in question. Suffice to say that the appropriate action has been taken against the offender(s) and you will not encounter them again.

Thank you for your continued play at Global Poker. Please let us know if we can help you with any further issues or questions.
Regards,
Grey
Game Integrity Team

Assuming no one received from a PLO side?

I can vouch for survival of the fitness not being a bot as I know who's behind the account. 100% not a bot

ya autism is very strange. plays a wide variety of stakes. for some reason doesnt top off his stack often. plays a ton of tables and plays very much like a gto bot postflop

Thanks for sharing. This is all it takes for us as a community to clean up this mess. If we're concerned, address them, and someone can speak up. I admit, I was very skeptical of fitness. Glad to hear he's human.

If you just out who you think are bots in a thread people will just start naming off anyone who plays good poker on alot of tables. Then people who're actually botting can just watch the thread and if they see their name mentioned they can shut off the bot and cash out. Much better off to email globals security team on the downlow then trying to name in public.

Hey guys,

Thank you for all your comments in this thread. We appreciate your concern and your commitment to ensuring that Global Poker remains the fastest growing site for US players well into the future.

I can confirm that the sequence of events as posted by Warder and others above is broadly correct. A group of players has been working with our Game Integrity team to ensure that accounts in breach of our Terms of Service were identified, monitored and removed from our site.

We understand that the issues stated in this thread are very important to the poker community and that many of you are passionate about ensuring the games on Global Poker remain on the level and free from collusion, HUDs and AI.

One thing has been made very clear and that is that players will not stand for a site that sits idly by and lets players breach Terms of Service with impunity. We have heard your message and are committed to delivering an online poker experience in line with your expectations.

Global Poker takes Game Integrity very seriously. We are working very hard to ensure that we have security measures in place that are the envy of the industry. We have come along way in our sites short existence, our number of players have grown exponentially and we have worked hard on ensuring we have security tools to match. Are we there yet? Absolutely not, but this is a key priority for us as a business and something we will continue to work on and build.

The first part of this process for us has been to bring in significant expertise in this space. We are proud to have recently brought on both a Senior Security Manager and one of the world's leading designers of Bot Detection Tools, both from one of the world's largest poker sites, to our team. They have been instructed to build the team that they need to ensure we are proactively monitoring our games. This will take a little bit of time but it is a process that is well and truly underway.

Now that we have the knowledge in-house we are working on the implementation. We have allocated significant funding to our Game Integrity team for the next quarter to ensure that we have a significant arsenal in place to proactive track players who breach our Terms of Service.

Regardless of what poker site you play on there will always be people who try to cheat. Furthermore, they will always develop new ways to do it. Our job is to build the best defense mechanism possible to ensure that we are catching these players proactively and removing them as quickly as possible. Global Poker is committed to doing just that.

We are excited about what we can achieve and are thankful that we have you, the players, to help us.

As I have said in the past, the best way for you to assist in this fight is to contact support@globalpoker.com with anything you see that is suspicious. Coming into forums and posting accusations or claims is not helpful and we would respectfully ask you not to do so.

Firstly - it is not helpful as many times individuals get it wrong. An overwhelming number of players who are reported to us as bots are indeed not bots, but actually humans. We don't support players names being dragged through the mud without concrete proof. How would you like it if you screen name was plastered all over poker forums incorrectly labeling you a bot?

Secondly - even if you are correct that a player is a bot. All highlighting the name in the forums (before the player has been banned) does is notify them that we are on to them which will cause them to disappear, cease operating under that name and bring the investigation back to square one.

This is why we were thankful the players who assisted in this case kept quiet until after the investigation was complete. This is why we were able to get the result that we did by removing those players from Global Poker.

I hope that this post helps you to understand our position and how seriously we take this matter.

We thank you again for the passion you have shown on this topic and ask you to contact us via support@globalpoker.com if there is anything you need to report.

Joey

This part should be pinned somewhere, as a separate thread or something, so that everyone can see it.

+1, agree with everything said. That being said, going forward is your group still looking into potential bots at MSNL?

amazing reply by global, incredibly impressed by their response, and happy to play on a site that values the input and concerns of the players so highly.

I respect staysmacked's right to voice an opinion, but I think he does not realize that our team had a method of pinpointing bots with what I would say is 100% accuracy. We were by no means throwing out random account names to global and especially not on this forum. We did not submit any names that we were not, in our opinion, completely certain of, because if we were wrong that would taint the appeared validity of our other claims. It is not conducive really to disclose the manner in which we came to certainty in case the bots come back; as has already been mentioned.

Can also confirm everything warder said was accurate as well.
I'm very happy to hear everyone who received a refund! This is a big victory for the players and global against the cheating bot makers! We can celebrate it together. If Chicago Joey does do a podcast about this, I would hope he knows from someone was a integral part of this situation, that I believe Global handled the situation as best they could and I am happy with their efforts. We cannot be overly negative to a new company facing such a new threat. If I was in their position I don't think I could possibly have acted with greater integrity and respect for the players. Thank you global! Warms my heart hearing everyone getting payback from the cheaters

Humans 1 Machines 0

That's great news that you've hired an expert for this stuff, but I'll have to keep on the prowl for more bots to see if your bot detection team can catch them before we can, then i will rescind my former negative comments about globalpoker bot detection abilities.

It's appropriate to run this like a police investigation, police detective's dont open their cases up for the public to investigate for obvious reasons, they want the criminal in the dark. you can make your own investigations of course but it would be seriously dumb to go around saying who your investigating on the forums, and what the bots characteristics are. (you were way off btw.)

I also hate false accusations and i feel like lots of people would get falsely accused if everyone was involved in this, due to the nature of human overconfidence in their own guesses/ability.

we operated in more information than you know about, you'll just have to trust us that we knew what we were doing by our results. Hopefully globals detection team is up to scratch with their new team so we wont have to do the work.