I found Shishune playing 25NL and 50NL full ring tables at 1 AM PDT today. Only a few tables at a time and game selecting. He never plays zoom/blitz.

To reach 2096 points, it would take about 10,000 hands between those stakes. This would take something like 30-40 hours given his limited number of tables.

What are bots doing playing such low stakes and limited volume for $50 rakeback? Also, it's interesting that his account is from Brazil, not Eastern Europe.

Are we sure these guys are botting? If they are, then surely they aren't the same type of bots that were crushing mid-high stakes. Maybe that's why WPN has yet to ban them.

Afaik OPs lists aren’t intended to be exhaustive.
scanning last weeks leaderboard I can see several 200 blitz bots, #33 meifong1, #34 chaptol, #74 illinoiz. #76 STR1SCH is a 100nl bot.

One thing I noticed is that Shishune used to play mostly 100 and 200. Now I only see him at 50.

Charlie Carrel made a Video about a crazy bug on ACR that exposed the bots that were playing cashgames (200nl). This happend a few months ago, and some of these bots are still playing. Every bot went allin for stacks in 5bb pots.

https://youtu.be/_ZlxGafh1wE?si=hHTMh_GtBlFiMlHU

of course these are house bots. they can detect suspicious human activities instantly but cant detect these bots for years? and once its brought to their attention they refuse to do anything about it? theres way too much money for these sites to not run bots.

Hate to say I told you so. It's been going on for years, and if you couldn't spot it before now, you have pretty poor pattern recognition and lack critical thinking skills. Or people didn't have volume in the pools and were just in denial / shitposting.

GL in the live streets, men.

Also working a regular job isn't so bad.

Just about the only plausible reason I can think of for why an online operator would want to implement house bots is for game-starting, because it would be far cheaper than hiring prop players.

The house has no need to run bots to extract money from the real players; they have a much more efficient tool for this. It is called "rake."

I can think of 10 million reasons why sites would employ bots

It's free money for the "bot" "accounts: - you create the perception of liquidity and invite other "legitimate" accounts to play to collect more "deposits"

You capture as much of the deposit you want through "rake" and through the game itself

The "accounts" can be controlled for any style or loss/win pattern and work together to create liquidity

Funnel

Poker Fan watches influencer
!
Influencer promotes game
!
Fan goes to play game
!
4 controlled accounts playing 24/7 waiting for fans
!
Fan sits down, thinks they are in a real game of poker, loses money to rake and other players but had fun doing it
!
You can optimize this process for each customer and build strats to maximize deposit through other gamification strats to retain
!
Re-invest in promotions/marketing
!
Print

When you're the operator you're in control of how much of that process is your assets and how much are assets you don't control or profit off of - it's like building your poker strategy, you can be as greedy as you want to be vs the right opponents. You as the player are competiting against the platform who coded the program you're on. The platform can turn on any lever they want at any given time depending on goals. Most of the platforms have no one regulating them so they can do whatever they want to do - choose your own adventure as the "gambling" "platform" operator.

Think of how live games work


Host runs game w/ friends
!
Takes pieces and stakes others in the game
!
Find game recruiters and incentivize w/ rev share
!
Invite new players to game
!
Players donate to rake and other players in game
!
Game investor/backer keeps profit after split

House players/prop players/bot accounts etc.

Along the way as the operator you are in control of the table, the chips, the cards, the dealer, and who gets to play in the game. In a casino game, you assume that they are holding the game accountable for fairness. In a private residence you assume the game operator is holding the game accountable for fairness. No one is watching the game operator to ensure fairness so operator is free to do as they please. You don't need to find many players in your funnel if the stakes are high enough and you are able to create a scene where the players want to come back in the future through the perception of liquidity in the game. These guys went all in and blacked out all night but I ended up losing, what a great time.

Take out "live poker" and input any poker arena - the operator has all the power if they choose to enact it. Live poker can be any number of 100s of "poker" apps these days and you can purchase this funnel out of the box.

Depending on the shareholders and investors goals - you as the operator have a job to do and that job is to make more money for the shareholders and investors. Not every shareholder and investor is concerned about the ethics of how you get that job done. You as the operator have the lever to pull anytime you want to try to make number go up.

Game selection is more important than ever for the player and the operator - which players do you want in your game?

MY ACR investigations are officially closed

I have no idea what is going on there these days and no desire to learn more. The basic heuristic above applies to any poker arena and they are always changing.

This thread is one version of what might be going on there but have no idea if the data is true or where the "bots" are coming from. Providing some context to the poster and others on plausible reasons why any operator would want to make more money and the levers they have to do so. You can input "real" players in the above funnel and run a fair operation just as easy as anything else.

Automated "bot" teams are pretty common - stables, corporations, groups, friends, etc. whatever you want to call them - lots of ways to program the idea depending on goals - you as the operator have to battle those teams trying to capture liquidity from your players - do you input your own teams if you cant beat the other teams at some point? How do you stop the teams or identify who is in the team to capture the liquidity from you? The teams are very very advanced.

Especially a site with bad beat jackpots and GGcheers. Bonus points if you disable sharkscope and statshand.

great post joey

Do ACR bots ever sit alone and start new tables? If they are house bots its no brainer but i dont think they do this. Any observation ?

It doesn't apply to SnG, MTT & Zoom/Rush formats. But w/o bots zoom game at some limits stopped.
As for regular tables, BF cash bots usually play in shifts, including dead time.Their alias was even losing from 09:00 (9 AM) MSK Time, when it's night time in western hemisphere. Who in their right mind would play at that time while losing? Only those who have 50 accs popping up from nowhere, ready to beat midstakes + with good redline & similar stats. So even if they don't start tables etc, they are always present & ready to fill the tables.

They do indeed

^ From the Carrel video*

This has to be the most laughable email I have seen from them.

I lost 50k from 2020-2022 on this site in MTTs and while that might not seem like a lot to some it was crushing to be beat down by these bots and RTAers, watching accounts from Russia play from 8am to 11pm with me, then I’ll sharkscope them the next day and they were playing the 2am buy ins also all the way through my next session also.

No problem there but they caught a bug in there bot software and they’re all

“Hey bro, Chill! Or at least tell us how to stop you!”

Did you receive any refund?

Remind me of the Ogre Bots case, a bunch of accounts playing euro nights from this tiny city of 30k people in rural Latvia, back when double clicking an avatar would tell you the city where they were playing from.

It feels like they have to take action against bots that reach the public's attention. Like the twitch streamer final table or the more recent venom tournament. Then for PR reasons they can make a big spectacle about "refunding" pennies on the dollar and "banning" a couple bots which they can just start up again at a later date with a different alias.

OnLiNe PoKeR iS nOt dEaD. uR jUsT bAd.

Online poker is definitely not dead, and yes, you're probably bad.

if you zoom out of this situation and look at gambling as a whole, it is not unprecedented that ACR would run bots to prop up their player pools and win money from their players.

Horse racing operators have been doing this for years.

source: https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.co...fornia-racing/

I am not trying to derail the topic, I just wanted to point out that it is not far fetched that a gaming operator would not only charge a commission for hosting a game (like NYRA and Stronach do), but also use computer automated wagering (CAW) bots to also win money from the player pool.

I just wanted to add that perspective to this topic because it wouldn't surprise me at all if ACR was actually running bots to prop up games and to win money from bad players.

It's been happening in other gambling games for quite some time now.

Relative to other opportunities online poker is a stripped clean pile of bones and being a top 15% player across all of poker makes you "bad" online