I've received 200+ messages after yesterday's ACR cheating video. Everyone from the accused account owners, ACR owner & security, people w/ more information on accounts involved, high stakes regulars, bot creator/network operator & more

Will put out an update video tomorrow on the situation.

I understand that some are looking for 1000% smoking gun evidence on some of these things. I do feel like the evidence for botting has been provided on 2p2. I've personally witnessed two events take place. Bots have been banned in the past on the site at NL and PLO. If you have observed the games at plo10-plo200/400 over the past months, you would say "lol what the **** is going on here?" If you have played with some of these accounts, you would say the same thing. Bots have been proven to be high-level winners at these stakes on Pokerstars 3-5 years ago! While this issue isn't unique to ACR, it is clearly happening on ACR and allowed to continue to happen.

The possible super using accounts I can understand wanting concrete evidence on. I don't think anyone outside the poker site can provide this. I believe that this is exactly what I have watched take place for HOURS over multiple sessions. I've played against and sat out for fear of it taking place. This is also the most blatant case of this I have encountered. Why/how/what would this be happening for?? I have no ****ing idea. This is something I've never seriously worried about in my entire poker career. I've always dismissed these claims as "lol, calm down fish." After becoming more aware of this, I've started to heavily pay attention to tendencies from other accounts on the site that I've felt a very weird suspicion for and highly believe there is something incredibly ****ed up taking place. I will never be able to prove this by myself. If people have an issue with me making this public, that is fine. This is what I believe, and as someone who has recommended this site HUNDREDS of times, I want to make it clear why I can not do this anymore.

The information on the alleged collusion I received made me so ****ing angry. This type of activity taking place in the HSPLO games is something that just makes me sad. I made a video talking about fixing the high stakes world, have done way more research into the state of the high stakes world, had many conversations with people about the current state & how to fix it, and then I get a message about this. It's like, I don't think this can be fixed with the current crop of poker sites. I then started observing the accounts and play pattern and tendencies while also witnessing people I know play in the same games. This was the last moment that made me realize I needed to put this out sooner than later. If this is happening so blatant, the idea that it isn't happening smarter I believe to be impossible. I believe this particular case is something that ACR can prove on their end, but I have limited faith in them.

When you take into account all of these suspicions, this is why I made the video with the information that I have. If people don't believe what I'm saying, want concrete proof, or think I shouldn't have done it that is fine. I'm absolutely okay and can understand where they are coming from. I want those things myself. I want to be wrong about all of this.

After further conversations with my contacts in the bot world, I fear I underestimated the extent of botting and assisted software currently in use. After further conversations with people regarded the collusion at cash games and MTT, I feel more confident in this than previous. The 44bars account is the one that I think something ****ed up is taking place for sure. The possible superusing account, I will go to my death thinking something 100% is taking place here.

This is where I stand right now on things. I wish I didn't care about this; there really is no incentive for me to post about it. I'm now getting messages from all sorts of people about theories/cheating/etc. I want people to play more poker, not less. I want them to be as interested in poker as they can be. I want more people playing PLO, not less. Releasing this type of video is going to do the very opposite of those.

I will talk more about this tomorrow.

Online poker, so close to the end it’s sad, soon will be 8 bots a table with 1 sucker. As so many ppl has said in the past their is no way to really stop it so we just need to embrace it. But it’s not really fun when your the only human playing 8 nit bots that never tilt

Gg online poker

I don't think that has to be the case. Chess sites to a great job of policing against software, and I think poker sites can as well, it's just a matter of actually caring to do so.

Good post, Joey. The people giving you a hard time, even though right to ask for proof, really need to consider the source. You're not a fun player, you've promoted the site, you keep in touch with some of the smartest poker minds out there, and have for the last 3-4 years been one of the only bright spots in this sad game.

It really is unfortunate it came to this kind of a public display, but Phil Nagy and WPN don't give a single **** about these problems. Phil went as far as to say a few years ago "The bots will be handled immediately!", yet here we are. I've myself promoted the site, signed people up, and spent lots of my free time helping others in their sub-forum. It feels bad knowing I helped lead people to a place that is either too stupid to fix the problems or just out right doesn't give a ****.

Its very interesting that no one seems to see how much important is Joey not only to the forum but for the poker world as a whole.If he didnt make the video and say what he thought about ACR,the situation would have remained the same like it was before 5 days.Hopefully now some money can be refunded if 44barss mtts winning are going to taken by ACR.
Instead of wanting evidence for botting,do something that can help the community.

Haven't read through the entire thread, but i will say the same can be applied to ignition/bovada at at least the smaller stakes. Especially, at $5-$10 sit-n-goes, hypers, and zoom.

I've watched near perfect instantaneous ICM play at these tables over and over. The same betting patterns/amounts over and over. One of the weirdest things that i saw was at a full ring sit-n-go that was down to 5 players. Three players that were playing perfect ICM all sat out at the same time while the other guy and me kept playing. I ended up knocking the other guy out and the 3 other players slowly blinded out.

It's possible the site has their own bots to create action. I think it is more likely that a small handful of individuals are just mass bot'ing and using the anonymous feature to their advantage.

I sent numerous emails to ignition/bovada about suspected bots and they always respond back with some canned email about how there are no bots on their site.

So if they run another computer that tells them what to do how do they police that ? How can they be certain they are cheating

Computers play chess in a vastly different manner than humans. They absolutely never make mistakes. It's fairly easy to distinguish human play from chess engines.


Bots would be more difficult to detect on a poker site than a chess engine on a chess site, but there are certain actions that can be analyzed to distinguish them from human players. On ACR botters are so sloppy it wouldn't be that difficult to eliminate them from the player pool. Many botrings join and leave tables at the exact same moment...there are examples of players with a constant winrate who never move up in stakes...etc.

Its also worth mentioning that there isn't very much money in chess, which drastically reduces incentive for cheating.

If you are a 20 year old dude living in an economically depressed eastern European country, getting really good at programming poker bots is an actual potential way to make $50-100k+ per year in a place where finding a job that pays as much is nearly impossible without emigrating to a more developed economy, which is likely not an option.

On the other hand, cheaters at chess are probably more ego driven than financially driven - they just want everyone to think they're a genius. Not something worth putting in dozens of hours per week trying to improve your bot's game and stay a step ahead of poker site security. Well, let's be honest, the latter only really applies to Stars.

Incredibly stressful to work under these conditions when a good portion of a player’s energy is spent contemplating and defending themselves against collusion instead of focusing on playing strong poker. Takes all the fun out of it & fundamentally changes the game. As this stuff becomes more public and is now unavoidable at any level or game there needs to be more open conversation among legit regs. Joey’s ability to reach a large portion of the community is powerful & that video was important. Sure it was light on concrete evidence but he does his homework and I look forward to seeing where this goes. Keep pressing bro.

At small stakes where the rake is so huge (due to the rake race) the 8bb win rates are enormous. Especially when considering how the rake structure incentivizes focusing on more play instead of better play. How many tables are these guys playing? You’d think someone beating the game for that much over 200k hands is quite talented and would be moving up unless there’s more to it. All those 8k’s + rakeback adds up (not to mention pillaging the small stakes cash pool). In tourneys given the deep structures and ability to re-enter a competent ring of accounts would wreak havoc on the WPN player pool. It also seems like once skilled poker players start raking in cash in immoral ways they rarely change their tune (Bleznik, Sorel, Chino... etc.). 44bars’ results merit looking into, especially if he is banned on Stars.

We all know how the FTP, UB, and Absolute stories ended up due to lax or immoral management. Phil Nagy’s handling of the issue is a major red flag. Both over the long term & in response to Joey. From the outside it’s hard to understand how WPN can eat the $ they do in overlays & still make good profits. From an operational standpoint there’s got to be a lot of pressure to find new revenue streams and keep the high volume accounts in play. I haven’t played much on WPN lately but this has a similar feel to the UB & Absolute scandals.

Let’s hope legit regs join forces & come up with some more solid evidence. Anonymous 2+2 accounts with a few posts doing nothing other than name dropping will only muddy up the conversation.

And, Runitonce one time?! The US market is so ripe for responsible player friendly site operators.

A lot of this is still pure speculation with no numbers i.e. proof behind it. Im not saying that their isn't something shady going on at ACR but we have to have some proof. A lot of the posts in the thread are the result of the Dunning-Kurger effect as beginners have no idea how good/consistent someone can be with timing, bet sizing, frequencies because they haven't gotten anywhere near that experience level. I used to open sit Ignition 200 NL Zone to try to get the games going, and Ive been called a bot (I don't think i am), asked what staking farm i am a part of (none) and been accused of Superusing (definitely not true)... I even had a guy bumhunt me, because he thought i was a bot and he could figure out my leaks and use them against me.The point is that until i started to use chat, this regular was convinced that i was a bot made by Ignition/Bovada to get the Zone pool running and this guy was a winning regular.
I appreciate Joey saying this in a public forum, but i would like to see these tendencies that he is going on about, along with some numbers about specific accounts.

WPN just needs to ban all eastern Europeans. Would make the games a lot cleaner.

adam levine,

I understand your take, however the thing is a lot of the cheating is going to be difficult to prove both on the site's end and the observer's. Fully automated bots at small stakes wouldn't be the challenge to catch, it's the guys colluding who only do it say 25% of the time (where their WR increases significantly), or the guy's who have semi automation where a program reads the cards and game state and matches it to their database of solutions and gives them recommended plays. The player clicks the btns to play, deviates when he wants, chats freely. Only those who know what's out there and have lot's of experience with solvers would have any idea.

Not only is it a major problem at ACR and other sites without large/smart security departments, it's going on at PS too. I'm writing this with absolute certainty.

The statement on which much of this hinges is this one:

"Most of casinos that we support at the moment, are loyal"

ACR isn't mentioned. They don't say all of the casinos, they say most. Does most include ACR? Given how many feel ACR is handling bots, I understand why you believe it does. The other thing you mentioned, that I think is quite important, is "That’s not a statement coming from ACR, that’s what the site says". Yes, the botting site that is trying to sell their bot is saying that most casinos they support are loyal to bots. It may be true, but it should be remembered that they have a vested interest in having you believe that - they're trying to sell you a product. And when they make a vague statement like they are "loyal to bots", it's not really a statement you can clearly call them out on.

Yes, we certainly do. When you say a site supports a bot, I believe that requires some action on their part. What I've seen described by many in this thread, if correct, is clearly enabling. Supporting? Not the way I understand the word.

Sure, I get where you're coming from here. It's certainly possible that the distinction, in this case, between enabling and support is a distinction without a difference.

And on that note, I think we've both made our points more clear and hopefully at least come to an understanding of each other's positions. I used some harsh words, because I believed you were badly misreading or misrepresenting what the site said - sorry if that came off as offensive. While I still don't entirely agree with your characterization of some of what the site is saying, I think I understand where you're coming from.

bcmclawh is Bobby Mclawhorn online bracelelt winner.

Joey, when you play vs perceived "superusers" are they just crushing you losing 0 showdowns?

Or are they just beating you? In your video you only mention getting stacked by this guy once HU.

You don't even know what gto means. Refute me with logic.

Doubt anyone with access to GTO bot making "perfect" ICM plays runs his bots on $5 SNGs instead of highest SNGs?


Found few hands played with 44bars. None of the players mentioned were not present in the hands. None of the guys Joey mentioned weren't either (Greenspirit, CreateMyOwnEnergy). Doesn't really redeem them from collusion suspection, but doesn't really support anyone else's findings either.

As for the superuser accusations goes... Those are some seriously major accusations. (Towards site's integrity). However, if one had superuser account, why wouldn't he hold both PLO & NL lobbies 100% of time? Seems kinda no-brainer thing to do. Instead 44bars usually just sits on the ring games. Never have I seen him holding HU tables.

As for Belarussians/Russians/Ukranians... Majority of the end bosses in Stars are of Slavic ethnicity. A lot of world's top ranked Chess players are from there. GDP is low in those countries. Stakes are high in online poker. 1+1+1+1 = online poker is very viable career choice for a smart, young ruski.

Hopefully Joey isn't going full blown Marafioti and escaped from mental asylum (based on the wrist band) :O

I don't know much about these other accounts.

I've played a bit with BCM, a bunch with Dudelove and some with Scoopjackson. I do find the alleged dynamic between scoopjackson and Create incredibly interesting.

I can see that you didn't accurately understand the video I made. Also, your approach to what you think players with this capability is probably the same approach the level 0 users would do.

Most of the suspect stuff i saw was at lower stakes sng's, hypers, and triples. There is just vastly more volume of those running than medium stakes or higher. I've seen far worse play at the medium stakes than the low stakes. I found this quite peculiar so i payed attention to it quite a bit.

My theory is that most of the people running bots on ignition aren't trying to make crazy amounts of money and they're using the lower stakes to stay hidden. In fact, i believe i read someones post on 2+2 that ran bots on the site and he was happy to be making only an additional 20-30K/year.

Obv. not denying the fact the fact that botting is likely very, very real issue esp. on low-midstakes games. After Libratus match it should've became clear even to greater public that online poker is pretty much "buyer beware" when it comes to bots. Although I'm guessing most bots rely on pre-calculated solutions as real-time solving is slow. Also since PIO doesn't tackle multiway spots, I'd reckon 6-max is still ~relatively safe.

Collusion, be it between humans or computers, has existed as long as online poker has existed. Nothing's changed on that front. However, bots prob. could do it more effectively (=dead cards affecting equity). Collusion prevention should have gotten more effective with increased computing power (=ability to do big data analysis), but I'm super skeptical if any sites actually invest in this since it's something that costs a lot but doesn't really generate extra rake.

However, throwing superuser accusations after UB without concrete evidence is pretty random. Especially since your vid was on front page of HSDB and within first 5 seconds of your video you mention "potential superusers". So it's not just one of those "omg online poker is rigged"-videos there's million in YouTube. You're pretty vocal and popular part of poker media.

Not trying to shill ACR/WPN, but from my experience it's a decent site. Games are good, rake is competetive and cashouts have been fast. Post-Amaya rake hikes there's not a lot of decent sites with good liquidity. Obv. since they're not licensed(I think?) and their business model is basically to break every government ToS possible, I'm not surprised game integrity isn't also their no #1 concern. Also, hopefully the can afford these constant MDS overlays.

I started playing on WPN like 8yrs ago or something fwiw,

I can confirm that scoopjackson, dudeloves69 and Christinepoker are part human part monkey, 44bars seems human to me as well but don't have enough of a sample to back this up.

I can confirm that the VPN and multiaccounting security is non existent

Also I have been colluded against at 6m cg, 6m is dead due to collusion.... but playing HU is still just humans and apes asfaik

Also why is there no HU PLO tables higher then 1/2? I've been trying to get an answer to this question for a long time? Unless someone from WPN gives an answer to why there is no HU at ms and hs, then its within the realm of possibility that WPN is illicit in the bot collusion rings.

These are my biggest concerns,

Why are there no HU tables at MS/HS? And why they keep the reason secret?

Why they don't implement antes and turbo tables?

They do have HU nl & plo tables at every stake up to $25/$50

Ok I see them now on other skins, thanks for that

Do you think an ape could’ve figured that out in under 8 years?