valerija, marko, nikica, milena - definitely ex-yugoslavia area
dean - can be uk/australia but also possible ex-yu
daniell - def not ex-yu
roman - eastern europe, sounds more russian/ukrainian but also could be ex-yu
one without name specified

i'm american, the people who i mentioned knowing are canadian / swedish

I know a guy from bosnia with this name. He plays on 888 btw.

I think we're a long way from this being something that 2+2 would consider stepping in for, if they ever would.

Slow though the process may be, it appears to be inching along.

would be a redic awful decision to ban users and seize funds, using botting as the reason (generally hard to prove) vs using promo/affiliate abuse which is a ton easier to prove

I doubt it's with that exact spelling.

Fair point but I can see some reasons 888 might do it. Anyways, seems like there's a few banned accounts that are posting in this thread fairly regularily and immediately proving any theory that comes up implicating them as wrong. Yet no one has replied to this one. Is my theory just that ridiculous or is there something to it?

There are old Pacific accounts and they are legit. People are even lending these out (for money).

And your question is a bit silly. They won't/can't answer it, they might get their affiliate banned.

Could you please answer following question directly?

-> Have you or your extended acquaintances (up to your knowledge) received any additional Rakeback on 888, which would exceed the 2-3% effective RB, which you would get directly from the site's VIP-program in coins?

Yes or no is enough and obv. you dont need to provide the name of the affiliates.

By now it just seems that there might be a connection (maybe not - not sure yet).
If there would be a connection between banned accounts and those account have received "under the hand" additional RB,
then although on the first glance ethical-wise this would be imo alright and no offense (since no direct advantage would be gained over other players in a competitive sense) ,
it is afaik just clearly and strictly forbidden by 888's policy...

But what does not match is the existence of false "using AI"-accusations.
If the above mentioned would be spot on, then why not in 888's shoes just straightforwardly name that the reason for account-bans is that those relevant account have broken 888's TOS by receiving additional not allowed Rakeback

Due to that latter thought, I do not actually really think that the reasons regards to the closed accounts has something to do with them have been receiving additional and forbidden rakeback-payments, but still a reply to my original question would be appreciated.

Aren't 888/pacific the guys who confiscate 10% of your roll every month you're inactive after 6 months or whatever?

Why wouldn't they do this?

It is very unlikely that the affiliates are responsible for the banwave. Because lets say an affiliate gives a player additional rakeback on 888 and 888 finds out. What would usually happen is that 888 is closing down the affiliate, but not banning the player for it.

Well I believe you for what is worth especially after seeing Iamfromsweden having the same issue (the most non bot playing guy I ever saw playing with super unorthodox style).

I mean we are talking about the network that didn't ban obvious bots for years (dare2allin? Violent,Kajizagore etc. You can search fold old Lessu post about it) because they had some shaddy deal with bot creator probably? Now they just ban a ton of legit players because they beat the game for a solid winrate using the AI as an excuse. I mean honestly there are some guilty guys in ths group but there are tons that it seems 888 wants to get rid off.

I mean seriously we are talking about the network that wasletting bot run 2 years+ after they were reported with detailed info and now they somehow starts to ban people??

I mean this is 888 I don't buy this AI bull****. If they were really bots they would be still allowed to play on 888. Thats the sad truth.

The practise you mention is borderline industry standard.

Most sites do it.

They can only get their affiliate banned if they were doing something they shouldn't have been. At this point, the silence tells you all you need to know. Clearly something was going on that shouldn't have been.

Nobody ever tells the whole story, but sometimes the truth eventually comes out. I'd like to hear about what they're running that might look like AI, but we're going to do the little dance first.

Would their account really be banned if affiliate is giving them extra rakeback, with an email saying "During a security check on your account we have been alerted to suspicious game play indicating that the use of Artificial Intelligence may be involved"?

Unlikely sure. But having dealt with 888 long enough, I wouldn't completely put it past them and totally dismiss it.

Even if it isn't the reason, I think it's important to at least take note. There is a whole story somewhere, and this could just be a small piece of it. If what I'm suspecting is true about extra rakeback, it would obviously be against the site's TOS and makes the players lose some credibility in this case.

This is absurd. WTF is wrong with these guys.

I can say personally for myself, i do not receive any form of rakeback outside of the normal 888 stuff. I dont know about other ppl because i've never asked, cared to ask.

I was under the impression that 888 payed a 1 time fee per account, of course it's possible that they were allowing some under the table rb to some affiliates and things went sour. It's pure speculation at this point and why i didn't want to bring it up, it just puts ideas in ppls head for no other reason than it's a possible reality, there are many possible realities.

Even if that is the case, 888 would have to send these guys the rakeback...so 888 was participating, how does a site/affiliate relationship going sour result in the CONFISCATION of funds of the players who have nothing to do with it.... 888 at some point sanctioned these actions so wtf

Hmm could be that someone in marketing badly fcked up with these affiliate deals and is try everything and anything to cover their ass. I'd imagine security is pretty far down the totem poll - top management may not be aware of all this. A lot of these affiliate deals are pretty under the radar and dealt with my small teams.

I made a post earlier which I think is very relevant, that didn't get the love it should have. Maybe I wasn't clear?

Poker sites are running security software that will flag your account if the algorithm recognizes certain conditions. Once the account is flagged it takes an act of God to have it restored. Their first step is to send the standard email "There is nothing we can do, your account will remain closed."

I think they have very few competent support people and they rely too heavily on the software. They basically ignore your protests and only escalate it if you become very persistent.

The support people don't even know the reason the account was flagged because the first reply I got when my account was flagged was completely wrong. I got the real reason after many emails.

What I'm guessing is they have been getting a lot of hate for not stopping bots. They don't want to spend money on increasing competent security personnel so they tweaked their software to hopefully catch more bots. It could be that the software is getting false positives from a defective algorithm. That would explain why there are so many false positives suddenly...perhaps from a recent software update.

What are your sources for all this information?

If the number of bots is really rampant on 888 then these false (assuming the majority here is legit) positives could be a very small percentage of the total of accounts banned. They might have banned literally thousands of accounts and accepted something like a 2% false positive.

I quoted a personal experience with ACR a few posts back where my account was flagged and I was lied to about the reason. I got the truth after quite a few back and forth emails. The end result was, they told me this, "...it was the security software that disabled the card options due to a country mismatch and we cannot override the software."

This was a deposit problem, not an AI accusation but the important thing is that they admitted that they have security software and that it can't be reversed once it's flagged.

So, if we know they have security software, and their software is flagging accounts that are suspected of using AI, it is very possible that the code is shabby and they are getting false positives.

If their security software is anything like their poker software...

You could be onto something here. They say they "may" have detected the use of AI. I was curious as to why they sound so unsure in the initial email. And I believe that email is not from named security but rather from support.