MB do you mean http://www.evplusplus.com/poker_tool...nce_simulator/?

I don't know the ring game one that you have in mind, but this is relevant for SNGs: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/36...ariance-73786/

I remember that from before I worked for PokerStars, and it is not officially endorsed by PokerStars (use at your own risk, etc.) but is an eye opener.

josem - That wasn't it but definitely interesting. Thanks for finding that.



That looks like it might be it. Thanks. That's awesome.

You could play with this thing all day. I just ran one for a 0.1bb/100 winner who had one line WAY higher than all the other roughly break-even lines. Variance is fun!!

I agree that variance is, indeed, a lot more of an issue than a lot of people think but I find the fact that the first player has an almost inverted set of stats compared to the other two a bit of a stretch.

Just because variance exists doesn't mean it happens that distinctly for three separate chunks of data over a period of six months and nearly a million hands. Not impossible, of course, but not very likely.

I wrote an ROR simulator myself once. It was great fun to use as it worked all but instantly and if you kept tapping the 'go' key it would plot a 'mountain range' across the screen several times a second. What was interesting, from the POV of this topic was the amount of time that really dramatic variance effects didn't happen.

I'd agree but I wouldn't call those differences slight. In absolute magnitude, maybe, but the way the first set are almost an inverse of the other two is odd. Particularly if a robot is involved as that should be more consistent than a human player and so probably wouldn't have its own variations adding to those natural in the game.

Then again, I can't think of any other explanation for the general weirdness of the behaviour.

Maybe they are more accounts/bots/players involved and they are changing positions (i.e. stakes) from time to time.

Just got the 'investigation complete' email. Stars says nothing fishy here so I guess we're all to believe it's a coincidence. Move on, nothing to see here ...

wiki - Did you even look at the graph stuff?


you "finding the fact" unlikely has nothing to do with it. The type of variance you are looking at is not at all unlikely for the exact same player with the exact same win-rate and SD over that length of sample. Period.



Now I don't even know what you're saying. What is happening "that distinctly?"



Except that the differences pretty much are. Again, you seem to be underestimating how much variance can be a factor for the exact same type of player.

If you go to the graph and just plug in for 3 or 4 samples (or 10 samples to get a slightly better idea) with win-rate of 0.5BB/100 and SD of 30 over 200k hands or something then there's a reasonable chance you will end up with variance EXACTLY as shown in the PTR winrates.



You brought this up before and it's still not really relevant and you are overestimating the consistency of a robot over a human player. The EV-graph simulator stuff is even MORE consistent than the robot. Because the robot will be playing in a bunch of different games some of which he is at a greater advantage than others. The EV simulator is EXACTLY whatever you want it to be (0.5BB/100 with 30BB SD or whatever) as if it were playing on the exact same table against the exact same opponents ALL the time.

So if you want the ultimate consistency you should dismiss the bot at the live tables with different players making different adjustments to him and instead go with the EV graph simulator. And the results for that simulator are all over the place for every 100k or 200k hand sample you put in there.


Yes, they might or might not be bots. But it's clear the winrate does not get us any closer or further away from being able to draw such a conclusion either way. You "thinking" that a bot would have more consistent results over those smalish sample-sizes if it were the same bot is an opinion that doesn't really matter here. You are just guessing.

There are ways to actually scientifically measure whether an even more consistent player than a bot would yield the kind of consistent results you envision. And the science has proven your belief to be wrong.

That seems completely strange that all three players moved to the same stakes at the same time with roughly the same volume. Yet Stars concluded their investigation that fast and seriously concluded there was nothing to see here? I have to say that I don't think I'm convinced. I understand there are a zillion players on Stars and if you search hard enough you should be able to find the same kind of similarities with 2 players.

But 3 different players making 2 different switches in stakes all at the same time is a lot more than just the same two guys moving down stakes together once.

Did they just do an IP check and decide that everything must be cool? How could they possibly come to a conclusion that fast? Seems reasonable that they at least know each other and might be sharing hole-card info or ANYTHING.

I'm kind of curious about these players myself and wonder what their VP/PFR numbers are and how much they are on the same tables with each other, etc.

u can defintly build bots for SS imo they are just push or fold. and have set ranges.


Pls do the right thing and if u suspect foul play here forward to PS support

mg - Nobody is saying you can't. I'm not sure why you posted that.

And almost certainly it doesn't have to be push/fold to be a bot but that's kind of a different topic entirely.

ohhh ok lol read the first page and saw someone say u cant build bots for NL. My bad should read more.


But i hope OP does the right thing and report them if he suspects any foul play

Well I might have skipped that part then as I sometimes just ignore the stupider stuff on there (and saying you can't build bots for NL is clearly stupid). anyway, go ahead and read the rest of the thread if you are interested. Saying, "I hope he reports them" is kind of silly after he's already updated the thread about how he reported them.

OP - do me a favor and PM me their screen names? I play those stakes and would like to know how often I've played with them.

Bob, you've completely misunderstood what I was trying to say and argued a load of points with which I don't disagree.

The only point about robots and consistency is that you are less likely to see results skewed by tilt. How much difference that makes depends on sample size and depth, length and frequency of tilts. Over a large enough set of samples a robot will be more consistent than a human player that tilts.

Most of the weirdness here isn't even really about variance. It's about the way that three players chose to move down in stakes after a profitable run at a certain level.

I'm also befuddled by the extreme nature of the 'coincidence' we have here. I paid more attention today to these specific accounts and while I won't publically out 'innocent' accounts, I'll give what I can.

All 3 show major Soviet Bloc cities (former USSR), but the geographic spread is on par with NY to LA. They don't appear to avoid nor intentionally play on the same tables. They will get all-in against each other as often as you would expect two 8/8 players to wake up with monsters at the same time.

I have about 3k hands on each player and they're all between 8/8 and 9/9.

My best guesses would be a) complete coincidence (ummm, no); b) a single botter using proxies and multiple identities to deter suspicion; or c) a group of online players that have cross-trained with each other and all play the same hours and same games and by their discussions made decisions to change levels at the same times.

Their PF hand selection, blind stealing and blind defense strategies are all as identical as I can tell without completely tearing apart every hand I have on them (and even then I don't think the sample is large enough to determine any real differences).

If they are cheating, then well done I guess as nothing will stop them now.

If you play 50nl 50bb tables in the afternoon/evening of USA ET then you've played them all plenty. PTR the top ten shorties in your db and you'll figure it out if you must know but I don't think the knowledge will change anything for you.

I think that before you address the timing coincidences you need to come up with a plausible mindset for two players (the second two) at the time of the first stake drop and the succeeding couple of months.

How would it go (figures averaged for the two players)?

At the time of dropping: "OK, I've making around 0.8bb/100 for ~ 100k hands so I'll drop down a level and see if I can improve on that - if I can make more than 1.6bb/100 I'm up*."

A couple of months later: "Right, I'm now making about 0.1bb/100 at half the stakes. Perhaps I shouldn't have started drinking tank fuel when I dropped stakes."


* Actually, a little less because of rake considerations.

Well, that's nice to hear now. But your previous statements on this stuff that I had quoted indicated otherwise. If you're cool with the likelihood that the win-rates really don't tell us anything then I think that's great.



Absolutely. The win-rate stuff neither confirms or refutes any of this. The strangest part about the winrates are whether they were all choosing to move DOWN in stakes when they were actually winning. But to me that's not really a big deal. They could have had downswings or something. It's more weird that they chose to move down together and not as weird that they moved down while still showing a small winrate.


malloc - Thanks for posting that further information. All 3 players being from Russia AND having all these weird coincidences together is bringing back more nightmares and flashbacks of the Chinese Stud collusion and the Chinese DON collusion.

Dear Stars - There could be some cheating right under your noses. Just taking their word for it that they like playing the same stakes together probably isn't good enough here (no idea if that was the case with them...just guessing). Please use some common sense on this.

Passing one or more of your detection methods while perhaps ignoring common sense was how the Chinese stud and DON rings were able to get away with it for so long right under your noses AND while multiple people were able to clearly see how obviously suspicious they were.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that you could clear these players that quickly and just let them continue playing with each other while switching stakes together, etc.

I guess there's an outside chance that these players have already been investigated before and Stars was just repeating their previous findings in the e-mail correspondence to malloc. But even if that's the case I think another investigation is clearly warranted.

You latched onto the raw win rate stats when I was talking about (intending to talk about) something rather different.

e.g. If you toss a fair coin nine times in a row you can say diddly squat about anything being odd if the distribution of heads to tails is roughly 50-50.

However, if you get three people to throw the coin three times each and find that, compared to a certain player, one player has the exact same result whilst the other has the exact opposite, that will only happen (by accident) one time in 64.

What I was trying to point out was the oddness of a similar result except in this case it was a set of winrates above/below the mean winrate.

Didn't read all the replies but checking PTR is legal as long as you don't have the pokerstars software running at the same time.

I also think breakeven bots exist and are used (this is the main reason why I think allowing shortstacking is a bad idea), just less likely on the bigger networks that can't stand bad PR.

I don't think there was any significant Chinese Stud collusion.
We're not taking anyone's word on this for anything. Since the 2p2 thread popped up, I've asked one of our very best investigators (who is trained across bots, collusion, multiple account abuse, everything) to have a further closer look.
I don't believe that the people who are collectively referred to as the "Chinese stud players" were or are colluding. If someone wants to debate this, then please send us an email so we can use real hand histories to demonstrate our findings.
We agree, and that's why we're doing it.

Michael - Thanks for your response. I hadn't seen you had replied to my post. Good to see your willingness to discuss something like this here and to respond to my criticisms and concerns, etc.

Not to open that old can of worms about the stud players but I thought you guys had gotten rid of some of them. There was also that whole bit about their disconnect-protect abuse, etc. Meh, whatever. It's ancient history now.

Do you not agree that in this situation with these three players it's incredibly suspicious for them to all play very similar styles (I'm taking the OP's word for it that they are all 8/8 type players or whatever they are) and that they all changed stakes at pretty much the exact same time as each other and that they all happen to live in Russia? Surely you don't just think that's all just a coincidence, right?

Can you at least say whether they are associated with each other? To me...it seems incredibly obvious that they must be somehow. But I'm curious if you are willing to say that. (obviously players who are associated with each other like friends or relatives or anything else aren't necessarily cheating)

I'm glad that you put one of your best guys on it to look into these three a bit further. But for him to come to a determination that quickly surprises me and it makes me wonder how in depth the investigation was. Were the players asked to explain the strange similarities amongst them and how they know each other? If they weren't then I am curious why not.

I'm certainly hoping that the players weren't cleared based on having gotten into some showdowns against each other or something really simple like that.

+1

Why is Stars suddenly adopting such seemingly tolerant behavior in such cases? It's like they've turned into some crappy network like Ipoker, FFS.

Nice catch, OP. Between this, the chinese don, Stoxtrader and the poorly executed 2-year admitted LHE colluders (couldn t find link, sorry) it's like no one there gives a crap. Why the hell isn't Stars' detection software insta-noticing this stuff? Very disturbing..

OP, very good job for bringing this to the community's attention. But, I think you should PM the SN and anything you know to trustworthy 2+2ers so they can look into that more specifically.

PTR once proved they are willing to help the community for that kind of issue and stars has proved they can't. In addition, we are lucky enough to have among 2+2 some very good and trustwhorthy people willing to spend time analyzing mass datas. Give SN's ASAP.