Before they ban they should get a copy, once they use it they get a list of those using it effectively, the licence is linked to Stars IDs, they can personally inform all the users that it is banned by email, then get their collusion team to look at the lot. A few database searches at their end will tell us whether someone has been using it to collude or not :-)

Plus I bet some of the colluders have been dumb enough to use Stars transfers to square up their joint bankrolls, distribute shared jackpot dividends for the stable and the like, indeed, the first database check on the list of users should be who is swopping money around between themselves.

The second to see who has decided in the wake of this row and the chance that they will look at collusion in Spin & Gos as a good reason to minimise their online roll.....

Definitely a step in the right direction!

Don't see why Pokerstove made the list though

Is playing a shared bankroll against the rules?

People who post this kind of thing just a few days after they have finished collecting information have no idea of how big companies take decisions.

Ok, I admit cheating can happen live. If one or more of the other players, the dealer or the venue manager is crooked - I won't find an even game there either.

What's happening online though is happening with the consent of the operator, which makes it much worse. Listen, I like playing online, but until these problems are fixed it will never be good for anything more than playing with a dollar on the table against some Russian teenagers, just for a bit of practice - almost a halfway house between play money and real money gaming - which is a shame because it's more convenient than going to a live venue.

At time of writing (admittedly morning CET) the highest online cash games going on Pokerstars and presumably then worldwide are $30-$60 Razz and for NL Holdem it's $5/$10 - a level that you can find in pretty much any proper town in the world, even in Kosice - but online that's as high as it goes and TBH I wouldn't recommend to anyone that they play higher than they are now - just that they use it as a tougher version of Zynga.

@Richas
re: collusion, I'm surprised you mention that it's winner take all. Wouldn't a format with ICM considerations be better for collusion? - Not to say it doesn't happen in this format too.

Also they can get seats together just coordinating to press "register me for the next five" at exactly the same time over Skype. In addition to banning software, something like the zoom-style seating mentioned earlier is probably the solution (though if someone has been waiting more than a certain length of time then they need to be fast-tracked).

What rules? We have no official sporting body to impose rules on poker, we struugle to get a standardised set of rules even for major tournments with professional tournament directors.

We have some Stars rules as a quasi regulator and we have the criminal law on cheating but proper rules? A governing body, nah, TBH though the way cartels grew up and behave I suspect that if we did get a universal governing body made up from those in the online poker "sport" it would make FIFA look good.

In this case evidence of a shared bankroll and deliberately seeking to sit together in a 3 handed game vs other player(s) would be pretty damning evidence of (criminal) collusion against both the quasi regulators TOS and the criminal law.

In terms of the regulator and their goals and the social responsibility rules Stars is onliged to meet there is no way that a three handed game where two share a bankroll and deliberately choose to sit together is about as far from "Fair and Open" as you can get. I mean do you think the third player would sit if informed that the other two were playing off a shared bankroll?

You are a very nasty man, you have just made me get that damn Mathematics of Poker book down again, it takes me about three weeks to get my head back around it and worse this time I will be trying to work out how to apply ICM under the more complex model of team play 2 vs 1 - not an area they extended their analysis to as far as I remember but I am pretty damn sure using ICM principle to a 2 vs 1 poker game with winner takes all would deliver a pretty solid mathematical proof that the different pay level (eliminating the "villain" vs beating both "heroes") alters a shed load about how the two should play and delivers a huge advantge to the colluder "heroes".

This is a tool designed to make collusion easier, it also makes it possible for far larger stables to be in on the same game, making the collusion far less visible. Just because cheating is possible that does not mean a tool built to cheat with should be on the PokerStars approved list.

As an aside I have finished reading the product launch thread on here.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...4/index11.html

Throughout it customers and potential customers are encouraged to take it to Skype. The last three posts before the thread sponsor (who owns 1/8th of the software) are fascinating.

The thread was live for three months but in less than 24 hours of this first mention of the Sniper mode

The thread was closed and all "support" pushed on to Skype.

*presumably elsewhere or in a post in the thread that has since been deleted.

Meanwhile, Pokerstars didn't detect a $1.4m bot scam. Do you seriously think focussing on collusion in spins is worth our time considering how easy it would be to detect and how much easier it would be to implement in any other game?

You have spent so much energy focussing on the minutia of the game when there are serious issues out there ie data mining and bots

Don't worry, I've been off work so I still had time to help out on bots :-)

Bots and data-mining are nothing but a nuisance for Stars. Both only hurt Stars' bottom-line when public attention gets focused on it. If Stars would only have dedicated 10% of the funds they have allocated for advertising to the implementation of effective counter-measures we probably wouldn't need to be concerned about bots or data-mining at all. Sadly hiring Christiano Ronaldo as poster-boy gives the quicker and bigger bang for the buck than investing money into the prevention of data-mining and the detection of bots.

Richas I have to admit I didn't read all of your posts- but just now noticed your post on spinwiz.

There is no inbuilt feature to "collude" and sit with a friend of yours. You can sit with anyone else together to target them- ofc you can say that this can be used to collude.

However- pls read the arguments in the thread:

-There is waaaay less incentive to "collude" in spins compared to other sng formats (I'm surprised you don't get a heart attack thinking about 6max satelites and collusion possibilities).

-Without ANY seating scripts you can force yourself to be seated with your friend if you reg a few spins together at the same time.

I would in fact say it's a certainty that collusion in 6max hyper sats have happened. Mainly as a results of staking/shared bankroll deals.

However it's virtually impossible to detect/ban- an inherent problem that arises when playing poker online that has nothing to do with seating software.

Approval letter for SpinWiz from PokerStars copied from earlier in this thread:
SpinWiz implicitly identifies desirable tables by assuming licensees are good regulars. Unless all licensees have played against all other licensees they are implicitly using game information obtained outside the user's own play.

SpinWiz is not only executing a series of Pokerstars registration commands. It is manipulating the registration queue by deliberately dribbling regulars into a pool of non-licensed recreational players, achieving a table-composition result impossible via the standard PokerStars interface.

No, it would not be possible outside of this tool to somehow co-ordinate hundreds of players to manually register so as to dribble regulars into a sea of recreational players.

Pokerstars rationale reads as if it was written by a lawyer advocating for SpinWiz instead of a lawyer for Pokerstars missioned with minimising Pokerstars exposure to legal suit from a class action by allegedly defrauded recreational players claiming collusion between the Pokerstars site and VIP players!

Pokerstars, how about enforcing this statement of mission: Ban SpinWiz because it does in fact offer an unfair advantage to licensees who get to sit with a pool of recreational players materially different to that which is obtainable by simply automating the Spin&Go registration process. Further SpinWiz users can deliberately sit collusively with 2 regulars and 1 recreational player if they so choose.

Pokerstars is either ignorant or in collusion to deceptively defraud recreational customers. Earlier in the thread an email from Pokerstars claimed players in Spin&Go's are sat with other players randomnly. Yet SpinWiz in fact ensures recreational players only are sat randomnly while SpinWiz controls a non-random highly-structured group of specially privileged regulars.

Pokerstars, either tell all your customers the whole truth or ban SpinWiz!

Not sure you understanding the all picture of richas argument and you press on the colluding side only, justifing spinwiz with the fact that there are bigger issues.
Peraphs you were right on one of your previous post!!! Do a separate thread with pro-tools/pro-cartel/pro-scripts/all-regs and discuss how to better kill new players and increase more your own profit for another two years or so before completely kill the game and add it to the no fun games list and sustaining that is not your fault if new players are cheap and don't want to pay your rent.

Tim I disagree.

Spinwiz is a software that allows for easier registration (though admittedly it's not too hard to click some buttons).

You may choose to sit as many spinwiz users as you see fit, or otherwise "try" to sit no one but still have the risk of being targeted by others.

Spinwiz therefore does NOT specifically point out weak players for you to target. You decide for yourself whether you want to be seated or not. Table selection is a part of poker.

You can however argue that spins should be a completely blind lobby system, but as it turns out- it really isn't. Pokerstars can make spinwiz useless should they choose to, but they don't.

I don't know how many spins you played, but without spinwiz the problems with collusion will increase dramatically (prob the reason pokerstars allows it as they can ban it easily). Winrates will decrease a fair bit. And colluders hellbent on collusion will be able to do so with manual regging anyway.

I'm happy with the banning of none, some or all software.

Was just making valid points that I thought ppl missed- and not justifying spinwiz based off one argument.

I mean ICM would be better for the colluders. Obviously I have a criminal mind thinking about it from their pov

The proof would be complex but just making sure not to knock each other out would probably be an unbeatable advantage if they could play at all.

I agree with your wider point about seating software - just the fact it's winner takes all doesn't need to be in there as an argument.

Untrue as by default a new SpinWiz user who doesn't tick anything will preferentially not be sat with the other licensees of SpinWiz but will be sat with players who have sat via Pokerstars registration interface.

Therefore Spinwiz implicitly points out other players to target = those not licensed for SpinWiz!

Your argument would hold some water if SpinWiz didn't give you a complete list of SpinWiz licensees! It is an implied collusion interface. If it isn't then make all the other users hidden. Reduce SpinWiz to simply registering for the individual's number of Spin&Go's. Cripple it back to basic registration functionality only (in the words of Pokerstars false understanding) "as can be done manually by the Pokerstars interface."

It is disingenuous to suggest that licensees of SpinWiz do not know that Spinwiz customers are self-defined as better players. They simply wouldn't have bought Spinwiz otherwise. They'd instead be ignorant users relying solely on Stars' interface.

Ergo, once licensed for SpinWiz, mark every other licensee as a reg, mark every non-licensee sat with as a rec. Rinse, repeat. Progressively redefine some regs as recs if they prove unworthy but that is a wrinkle left for better regs who bumhunt their own. Anecdotally the pool is soft enough that is best not to sit other regs at this time.

Table selection is NOT part of the Pokerstars Spin&Go registration process. Pokerstars support answers emails to players that "players are chosen at random".

No matter how you squirm Pokerstars has been misled into approving third party software in SpinWiz that provides an in game advantage (softer table selection) otherwise unavailable to non-licensees via Pokerstars supplied registration process.

The feature that facillitates getting MULTIPLE seats with your colluding mate is called the "sitlist". It prioritises your mate over others in the queue and seeks to register you both with the target as the priority over getting two non Wiz users.

When you say there is no such feature and I can use the specific term the app uses for it, explain the process and link to the tutorial video that explains it..........hmm. Oh yeah, I should shut up and worry about 6 max collusion not involving the third party software that is the subject of this thread....Doh.

FYI I have a record going back YEARS trying to tackle the stuff you say is "more important" in order to distract from this relatively new innovation in cheat software.

My personal enthusiasm for this bit of new software as the new bette noir is not how many are losing to the cheats, not the commercial disaster for Stars of their new rec app being corrupted (in part due to them messing up), nor some estimate of scale of loss - it is that in the case study it is 100% under a UKGC licence. The regulator cannot get off the hook on the process, begining to end SpinWiz is a UKGC issue. As my goal is to get them to act, to do their damn job - it is a lovely example of why they need to act. Thank you spin wiz.

No it isn't.

I think it's pretty reasonable to argue that this type of software shouldn't be allowed since it's basically making money by circumventing the UI and offering options that Stars doesn't want to offer in their client themselves. That being said, a lot of you really make your argument look much weaker when you stretch to try and paint people as cheaters without any real basis for doing so.

confused

finally came to realize that you are on the menu? NC breeds bots that turn against their masters in 3 ..2 ..1?

Players are technically chosen at random. You cannot forcibly seat with someone when a random joins for certain.

As I posted before:

What if I'm running a stable of players and do not want them to play with each other. Thus I make a program that crudely does what spinwiz does for MY stable only. Or even if I had say 5 players and tell them that they may only register every minute per 5min intervals. Should this practice be illegal?

I'm pretty sure pokerstars would welcome this, as I make sure that my players cannot collude. This is essentially what spinwiz does but on a bigger scale.

It's not so simple as to give it the same label as other cashgame seating scripts.

OK I think I get your point now- the sitlist allows for collusion. But can you read all my posts? What are your responses to the following points:

-There is waaaay less incentive to "collude" in spins compared to other sng formats (I'm surprised you don't get a heart attack thinking about 6max satelites and collusion possibilities).

-Without ANY seating scripts you can force yourself to be seated with your friend if you reg a few spins together at the same time.

Using NC doesn't mean considering data-mining acceptable. There's a huge difference between extracting a maximum of information out of hands someone played himself and doing the same with data-mined hands. The first is for me a part of a competitive game, the second a blatant cheat.