It was then an “un-usual” case with these 12 bots, right?

But posters in the thread say that these bots where quite easy to beat and played poorly. So they should have been discovered and removed by PS long time ago. But they didn’t.

So if these 12 bots was playing quite poorly and easy to exploit and anyway could survive for many many months, how about more advanced bots? Who will discover them? And how?

I asked Stars for some further infos and got this mail today:


Thank you for contacting us. Your email was escalated to me as a
member of the PokerStars Game Security team.

As you may already know, we barred a group of players who
breached our Terms of Service through the use of automation
software (bots). Our privacy policy applies even to players who
breach our Terms of Service.

We recently obtained legal advice on this very issue. We are
regulated on this issue by the Data Protection Act (Isle of Man,
2002) which you can read online here:

http://www.gov.im/odps/legislation/welcome.xml

Our lawyers advised that we cannot disclose User IDs in the
context of fraud on PokerStars. If a law enforcement agency
wishes to investigate this situation further, then naturally
PokerStars will cooperate in accordance with the regulatory
regime that we operate under.

I have checked your account and can confirm that you received the
correct compensatory credit.

PokerStars redistributed a total of $80,744 to the opponents of
the bots, which represents the total amount won by the bots
through game play. This money was divided amongst those players
who played at least 5,000 hands against the bots in proportion to
the number of hands played and the bots' profits at each stake
they played a statistically significant number of hands (25c/50c,
50c/$1, $1/$2).

Subsequently, as a result of the bots' average profits on a per
stake basis, players were due the following credits:

25c/50c: $1.5622/1000 hands
50c/$1: $2.4123/1000 hands
$1/$2: $6.8214/1000 hands

You were involved in the following number of hands against the
bots:

25c/50c: 440
50c/$1: 8735
$1/$2: 38

Thus, you were due a credit of 440*1.5622/1000 + 8735*2.4123/1000
+ 38*6.8214/1000 or $22.02, which was credited to your account
the morning of August 24th (PokerStars server time).

PokerStars chose to implement this compensation method because it
distributes the profit made by bots in as fair a way as possible
and means that the sums received by players are meaningful. If we
were to compensate based on actual losses to the accounts in
question, this would be unfair to the winning players.

PokerStars takes its commitment to enforcing our game rules very
seriously, and will continue to do so, both behind the scenes
with our tools (which are under constant review and improvement),
and in response to player-generated suspicions. Already, we are
using what we learned in this case to improve our detection
methods for the future.

I trust that this email clarifies our position on the matter, but
if you have further queries, please feel free to contact us at
gamesecurity@pokerstars.com.

That seems like a much more reasonable and fair way of distributing the compensation than they had previously used, which was to just refund losses. What isn't reasonable is that Stars are keeping 100% of the money the bots stole from players via rake and rakeback, which was where the vast majority of money was cheated out of players, for themselves. If Stars fairly refunded rake/rakeback the refunds would be several times what they are. But it seems Stars is determined to make a profit off these bots and as long as they toss a little bit to us, it'll make most people go away.

If i follow your logic all ppl using Poker Table Ratings on PS are cheater?

Of course, they're breaking the rules, aren't they? Unfair advantage, datamining, etc, etc...

Wow! Stars really does look out for the multitablers who generate the most rake. **** the newcomers or recreational players who might play less than 1K hands per month. Good thing for Stars most newcomers don't, or won't, have a clue how Stars screws them over.

Now I know I won't ever reload there again, if I ever need to.

So Stars? We know you're reading this thread. Did you think we were so stupid that we would be happy with being refunded a portion of the money? Did you think we wouldn't realize that stars was still profiting after "refunding" players?

Can a stars rep explain the thought process behind the decision to implement a compensation plan that allowed stars to retain profits that are a direct result of their incompetence?

It's staggering how far, stars has fallen IMO. I used to think they were as safe as a
bank. I used to think they were a well run, ethical company. Now I just want to finish the year and get my money out of there.

I guess we don't need a response from stars, the message is loud and clear.

I can neither confirm nor deny that as result of this incident, PokerStars is willing to bend on its policy of charging for cookie baskets.

Neither confirm nor deny.

Didn't read whole thread but.. I like many other multi-tablers would've received a msg in the stars chat box saying something along the lines of: "You have 60 seconds to enter this code" followed by a verification code...

Wouldn't that have alerted stars? Or would the bots be programmed to respond to this?

I've always wondered what the deal was with this.

Great job summarizing the situation Do it Right. Unfortunately the 2+2 community seems more preoccupied with what Annie Duke's farts smell like, than the fact that the most trusted site in online poker has no problem openly stealing money from their player base.

And then there are the morons in this thread patting stars on the back. It's mind boggling.

GG poker stars.

yeah really surprised the lack of attention this thread has gotten since the refunds.

We did not get the correct amount back. Apparently cash players aren't as loud as Don players, even though surely more of us got ripped off and by imo a much more shady way.

At least they had humans doing it ffs.

But whatever squeeky wheel gets greased. And obviously we as a whole in the cash games just dont give a **** that we were shorted 3-6x what was owed.

We should get total amount taken from tables. Plus rake. Just like the dons. And I think they even got more than that.

I emailed Stars telling them why their "compensation" is way too lousy and that I expect to get back everything I had lost to the bots, not just a small fraction. I explained why they can't pocket the rake the bots had paid just like that, because that is also money that belongs to cheated players and must be given back. Took many arguments from posts in this thread.

This is what Stars replied:
So basically they don't even try to give reason for what they did or to justify the pathetic size of compensations. Instead they just say "fcuk you, we are Stars, we are the greatest and we can do whatever we want, we are not responsible for anything, we have our own moral and we don't give account to anyone."

Just remember that when someday there is real competition in the online poker market and then go play somewhere else.

By them not paying back everything they took from the game, it's just more incentive for Pokerstars to NOT crack down on these botters. Pokerstars profited off this deal...why crack down on something thats making them money. We can't prove who's a bot or not and PS can just say that they "cleared" them.Just sucks paying for a service that you don't get.IE security.

Congrats to PTR for catching these bots.

Couldn't you just add a tiny variations to each bot you have running, thereby evading PTRs "Bot Detecting" routines?

A smarter botter is not bieng caught by such an oversight, or at least we can be sure that they wont be.. anymore.

Carb

From BBC News this morning:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11250835

A former Pokerstars employee, speaking anonymously to the 5 live Investigates programme, said that the site's rapid expansion caused problems.

"We had a hard job keeping up, just because of the volume of complaints from players [about suspected cheating]," he said.

"Not that all of the complaints were legitimate - 95% were just bitter [customers] because they lost, and there was no collusion. But Pokerstars still pledged to investigate them all."

However, the former employee also claims that during his time working for Pokerstars, staff switched off the automatic alerts that flagged up possible cases of collusion because they were so overwhelmed by the number of alerts popping up.

Pokerstars did not wish to comment on the claims made by their former employee.

nice one PS..

Just read this topic and i must say that there are still bots, even peopel at tables talk about them and they dont even respond, all they do is push fold preflop. Some names are mentioned here and i just saw one guy at table, so he is not banned.

This is really weird because if you have drug money or stolen money you can easy launder it trough pokerstars by setting up bots to laudern it and you will not even loose a penny.

This is making me scare that soon goverment could sign and investigate were did this money come/go and if it finds some illegal activity maybe our money will not be safe at PS.

Please comment on this, because new year is comming and i was thinking to play some serious poker at pokerstars and now i read this topic...

So he's a bot based on not responding to you in the chat and playing push fold poker with a 20bb stack?

Just happened across this post and figured dadaas should get credit for a pretty stellar prediction...