Oh and IN before epic supercomputer photoshop

Thank god there's another trusted site we (the American fish) can start playing on.

Dude, I'll cut you some slack because you have been around 2+2 a while.

As you can see, these 10 players are clustered in the lower left of the chart. They are virtually identical. The biggest distance within the bot group is Daergy at 2.39. The next closest player has a distance of 32.94.

Yeah, I really hope they're not going to let the accounts continue to play just to stand by their investigation. Major face plant.

magent - I don't think there's any way Stars would do that. It's late Friday night now...early Saturday morning in the Isle of Man. Things tend to go a bit slower on the weekends and it's possible there just isn't anyone available right now with the authority to insta-shutdown these accounts pending further investigation.

Whether or not there SHOULD be someone there at this instant to do something like that is a different matter of course. Just theorizing on the reality of the situation and that the fact that they are still playing likely doesn't indicate that Stars is cool with them...just that nobody is home right now with the authority to do anything following the more recent data revelations.

If it's anything like how they've handled things in the past, they will insist that they've done an investigation and the accounts are innocent of any wrongdoing until there is overwhelming evidence and a community outcry. At that point they'll retract and say they made an honest mistake.

Whatever security Stars has in place should just be terminated immediately and they should hire PTR.

For the time being you should be able to exploit them by sitting on their right and limping your small blind and reacting appropriately postflop.

The solution to end PTR. Finally.

This.

There must be a reason why Stars is so hesitant to suspend or even close accounts. I agree that they shouldn't just run wild and start terminating accts based any statistical coincidence, but I mean this is, at the very least, reason to at least temporarily suspend a few or all of these accounts while they investigate.

I mean how is it that any reasonable person can see that the statistical coincidences ITT are fairly conclusive that there is foul play occurring (multi-accounting at the very least) yet a dedicated security force whose primary function is to keep the games "clean" doesn't notice that this is occurring? Again I say WTF? They either have noticed and don't care or they're just not watching the games and hands that closely for statistical anomalies.

One reason is obviously they might not mind players being fleeced by bots as long as their rake intake isn't effected. I would hope this isn't the case and tend to doubt it's the main reason for the seemingly lax attitude towards potential cheats. You see this happen in other fields. I'll call this the Noel Gallagher effect. It's where people get so drunk on success, money (and cocaine etc) that they lose sight of how they achieved all their success and how prescious it really is and start putting out awful albums or in this case just not give a **** about their player base.

Could it be that Stars is just so paranoid about being known as a site that has bots and cheats that they just kind of hope no one notices?

I just can't think of an explanation for such a 'head in the sand' attitude towards what my unofficial tally has as 4 different now publicly known cases of, what at the very least can be viewed as questionable behavior by players. Just imagine how many cases haven't been noticed by 2+2'ers or PTR.. pretty gross situation imo.

If you put few people that never played poker in their life and give them a chart to follow and the will do so in a disciplined way they will all come up with same stats unless they misclick alot.

Bots are very disciplined. They stick to the plan and never tilt. I'm envious.

1p0kerboy - borys is correct. Human beings STRICTLY following the exact same chart could end up with the same kind of similarities.

I agree it's unlikely though as there should be some misclicks in there and the 100% fold in BB to continuation bet should be at least a little bit lower from OCCASIONALLY having a hand that is worth calling. That's the most telling stat to steer the whole group away from being a bunch of humans playing from the exact same chart.

It's almost certainly a bot ring...or the same bot that multiple players happen to have. And don't forget that beyond the statistical similarities of all the players is the fact that they all moved to different stakes at pretty much the EXACT same time. Which leads one to conclude that they aren't just 10 different people who bought the exact same bot...but that they are far more related than that.

And if they are far more related than that then there's the possibility that they have some other aspects incorporated to automatically share some of the hole-card info or stay out of each others' way as well.

That's the type of thing that PTR can attempt to look at (SD rate against each other, what cards have they had at SW against each other, etc). LOL at me explaining to PTR how to do Stars work for them.

Not only are they likely bots but one still has to consider the possibility that they are COLLUDING bots and not just the same bot program on multiple accounts. I'll be interested to see if PTR follows up on any of those possibilities.

this obv

It is possible that PTR = Pokerstars. Just sayin'. (The fact the site is so horribly written [words] is very clever).

This study contains more than just the broad statistics like VPIP and PFR.

What kind of a chart would have detailed postflop actions incorporated into it to account for all of the different situations involved that would produce almost identical statistics of players who just happened to be moving up and down stakes together?

Level? That article is the most embarrassing and damaging thing ever posted in regard to a site's security.

1p0kerboy - It would be the exact same "chart" that was in the program used for the bot.

If someone would run a bot he could change the variables very slightly each day and also change it slightly for each account, also you could program a bot to make an out of the box play lets say 1% of the time (shove garbage).

Something like that is harder if you just run a stable of dumb horses who need to have one memorized simple chart.



My main point is that poker is lol hard, anyone who needs some $ can just go to PTR and copy those stats and start playing with them, they work or used to work at least.

And LOL at Stars thinking that we will all feel much safer after their explanation of their supercomputer (which couldn't detect the Chinese collusion ring, the Stox multiple accounts that were softplaying, Furbean's hundreds of thousands of hands with his partner, etc.)

We don't feel safer Stars. You're security keeps failing us.

Yeah, no reason to shut down these accounts now. Take advantage of them by sitting at their table and relentlessly limping when they are in the big blind.

When they bet on the flop, make a min-raise no matter your cards, and take the pot down.

Well, as long as no one else has a hand (is in the hand) you will increase your profit nicely!!!

My point is that it would have to be a program (read:BOT) and not just a chart because of the extensive similarities, especially in some statistical areas that would require the 'chart' to be much to sophisticated.

Assuming they haven't read this thread and altered their bot's patterns now.

lol