Here's some pretty obvious graphs of people colluding on WPN:





I refuse to play on WPN for a number of reasons, but this was sent to me.


I am sure there are more. They are colluding and sharing hole card information or something more dubious is happening on the backend. I am not a statistician, but I believe it is statistically impossible to run this far over EV.


A statistical outlier like this should be really easy to detect on their backend, especially since they are Russian. With their already shaky background, this just tarnishes their brand even more.

With that said, there are only 2 conclusions:

• They are completely incompetent and can't implement basic security protocols
• They are somehow involved in the scheme

Either way, I suggest you play somewhere else.

Wait, are you saying that actual poker players are working together as a team to cheat their fellow players? How is that possible?

Next you will be telling us that thousands of players are running so much software that they are best described as cyborgs, and that any large field MTT has dozens of Bots in the running. Shocking!

How would collusion affect how you run over EV? You would need to be a super user for that right?

Also someone guessing a coinflip correctly 20 times in a row is suspicious but if you have a two million people try , you will probably find someone who succeeds.

In 2021, there’s just so many ways to cheat at online poker. All the traditional ways of collusion, security exploits, malware, plus increasingly sophisticated real time assistance. It’s already questionable if legit sites can handle it, then add in WPN not really being super legit. They probably don’t have a massive security budget and security is unfortunately a very difficult problem even for very well funded companies. I work at an 10B+ technology company with deep experts and we hired security researchers to do more pen testing and they still found tons of stuff.

I think sticking to microstakes online and real poker live is safest. I personally have not listened to my own advice and I’m stuck on WPN, I was a modest online winner before Black Friday and a healthy winner live, I assumed games just got tougher but who knows, they emailed me an apology for me playing against bots and sent me a 3 cent refund. Not exactly reassuring.

If there are 2 or more players sharing hole cards, then you get your draws in cleaner, so you will run way over expectation. So like if you have a flush draw and your cohorts held the suit and folded, you would fold your draw. Conversely, when you know that they don't have the suit, you will get your draws in drawing above expectation.

Same with AIPF. If you have QQ and your cohorts folded an A or K, your expectation goes way up. Lots of examples of this.

That's just one theory. There could be something dubious going on behind the scenes, too.


With regards to these guys being outliers, this is a relatively small pool at midstakes and these guys are all Russian, and all running well above EV. As I said, I don't think it is possible to run this well statistically over these samples.



I plugged the middle one into PrimeDope, as we have the biggest sample on him. As you can see, it is nearly impossible to run this well over his sample and his expected winrate.

I have barely played on WPN so don't really know what is possible there.
Are these all hands that the person who sent these personally played against these players or were they able to datamine these somehow? How did they get these samples?

Would that person be able to see how many hands these players have played against each other and how frequently they have gone in against each other?

If this person was played against these guys in all of the hands from the samples then it stands to reason that his all-in adjusted should be really really low.

I agree with your overall assessment about these players but I'm curious how the person who sent these to you was able to obtain this info. I'm also wondering if there is somehow any way possible for the all-in adjusted to be that far off through other calculation flaws or anything like that.

It’s much easier to cheat at small stakes as the player pool is large and the regs are less equipped to figure out what’s going on.

DONT SIT WITH RUSSIAN PLAYERS. 9/10 ARE CHEATS.

WPN/ACR needs to make these mother****ers record their sessions with cameras on tripods 100% of the time and submit the recordings to ACR security on a daily basis. And if their winrate or play isnt the same as before they were recording, you should confiscate their money. You should also make these accounts send photo ids while holding the picture ID up to their face in sunlight with street signs showing and a current newspaper. **** these ****ing cheating ass bastards.

The problem is, I know for a fact at least one of the accounts posted in OP plays Blitz almost exclusively. It would seem that playing Blitz might be a good idea to avoid colluders, but with the ACR pools being so small it's probably not much different than sitting at a regular table with 3x Russian regs. Only solution is to not play on ACR at all.

Already been answered ITT, but just want to reiterate that all in EV formula doesn't account for dead cards because it has no plausible way of doing so. However, if you're sat at the table and know a couple of extra hole cards your buddy folded, it vastly increases your true EV in many spots. Any competent player can use this info to get his draws in with better odds, or get in a hand like QQ in preflop knowing an Ace is dead.

Conversely, if you're a complete spastic on monkey tilt who open shoves every hand, tracking software will likely show you running way below EV. This is because you essentially collude against yourself by getting it really **** hands which are likely to have dead outs. See Paisting thread in PG&C for a real-world example of this.

9/10 aren’t cheats, but with that said, I tag every single eastern euro and Russian 1 color so I am instantly aware they are at my table and change my tag based on if they play normal or play like the bots. It’s done well for me and I also will not play with more than 2 at the table unless it’s the few accounts that I personally 100% know aren’t bots, colluders, etc.

I'm curious to learn more about how this works. Trying to think through it. I found the thread you are referring to but it is really big and I didn't immediately find the theory you were referring to. Do you remember a good page or post number that had this part of the discussion?

Dont give these guys any action. Dont play against Russian players.

What game/format are these players playing?

That's not conclusive evidence on it's own, but it's certainly extremely suspicious and I wouldn't play with these guys.

You'd need access to more than a screenshot, but if you're going to look at the difference between AIEV and outcome you should isolate all-in hands. The person who owns the database could filter it easily.

Did you report it to WPN? I dunno how good they are about this stuff but they're the only ones with the ability to ban these people if they're guilty, and have access to information that we don't. I'd think the hole card sharing theory could easily be tested by calculating EV with knowledge of folded cards.

Don't play on ACR. Full of cheats. If you refuse to stop because the games are too good to pass up given Americans' limited options, then stop whining and expect to get cheated to get your slice of the pie.

For the record, I'm a recreational donk. I haven't played a hand there in years because of all the bots, card sharing, RTA, etc etc

Pretty much any of the monthly updates he posts will show the phenomenon I'm talking about, but for example take this post:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=4896



Notice how the EV and actual results lines start to diverge most during the stretches with sharp downwards trends, which are when Paisting goes on monkey tilt and open jams any two cards preflop for hours at a time. Several people, including me, have tried to explain to Paisting why PokerTracker shows him running so far below EV, with little success. See these posts:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=4993

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=5086

I'm sure there are plenty of others if you search further back in the thread.

Cool. Looking forward to delving into this a bit more. Thanks for your help and linking to a couple of the relevant posts in the discussion

You raise interesting points on the 42o example. I understand it better now and I agree.
I have thought of semi-related stuff in other situations. I'm sure it has been discussed elsewhere but I haven't seen it (nor have I looked for it really).
Just thinking in terms of button/blind battles after 3 or 4 players (or more) all folded preflop impacting AK vs. QQ in which AK likely has greater equity than initially believed due to the cards that are more likely to be folded preflop by most normal players. And further to that if it can be possible to have less all-in EV that is reflective of one's style of play as opposed to just being unlucky...as has now been proven with this extreme example of paisting.

Do we think it is possible for one player to run higher than normal just via playing style? Maybe not as high as those guys are running. But if it is possible to collude against onself and run that far below then it also must be possible to run at least slightly above without it being due to luck, right? It has to even out somewhere.

Sorry for the tangent to the initial convo.

The person who forwarded those graphs to microdonk obviously has fairly large samples on those players. Wish we could get more info on hands they played against each other or some of the hands where they avoided each other and dig into it further to confirm some of what's going on.
With EV graphs like that, I suspect that looking at more hole cards, as the site is able to do, would make it really obvious that they are sharing. And thus should lead to concern as to why they haven't been caught yet when it is that obvious to people who are just looking at graphs and NOTHING else.

If you ain’t cheating on ACR, you ain’t trying.

Every WPN table should be a battle of card sharing: 3 eastern euros playing as a team vs 3 north Americans playing as a team gives you a better chance than 3 vs 1 vs 1 vs 1

LOL. This also has to include the related trash-talk.
"My team already folded two Ace-Rag hands preflop. Haha. What a bad all-in call by you!"

A tad xenophobic but also true

not xenophobic if it's true

I play on three separate poker sites. Not for a living but I put in a decent amount of hours per week. WPN seems to be without question the site where there is most likely to be collusion

Are you going to put a "#StopRussianHate" sign next to the "#StopAsianHate", "BLM", and "Trust the Science" signs in your front yard now?

In PLO, you can play succesfully against the EE players. Though I won't play if they rep > 50% of the table.

They tend to be very predictable. I won't get specific, but if you replay hands they show down you'll see very familiar patterns that are exploitable, and almost all of them play the same way--some more tight, some more aggressively.

Problem is, they take money (that might have been yours ) from the players who don't know what's going on. But I guess you could say the same about good regs.