Not surprised, I bet these are the people running all the ACR bots. Hope there will be some kind of action to fix this problem.

https://deeplay.io/

Since I first learned of this operation my question has always been how much were the sites that were infested with these bots aware of this company?

Were major sites paying this company for their services with the knowledge that they were putting bots into their games or were these bots deployed on a lot of these sites without a business relationship?

Chris Moneymaker was listed on the Neolab website as being on its Advisory board. How much did he know about this operation? The website seems to be gone now.

A lot of the suspected bots on ACR would play certain flop spots or turn spots (and probably many other spots) very similar. I think the regular cash tables at 25nl-100nl on WPN are especially filled up with the guys I’m talking about. Not to mention the *very* similar HUD stats and the preflop backraise traps they set up (you raise, one of them calls, other 3bets, you 4bet, caller goes all in…lol).

Can’t speak to other limits but I’ve played a ton of hands on ACR at those limits and since 2014~ish it’s just become tougher and tougher to win there, mostly due to the volume of “regs” but I have always thought most of the Eastern Euro players there are probably bots - esp the ones who take similar lines and have close stats. Usually 3-4 of these guys on every table.

I don’t see how WPN can be unaware of this major problem, it’s been lined out in pretty clear detail in several 2p2 threads and emailed to their support etc. that there is a bot farm operating on their network. Honestly I assume they’re complicit somehow at this point.

I don’t play on WPN anymore because of this and because I have better options now being in Michigan. I’m not some kind of riggie, I have a win rate on there (at the limits I can beat…), but I do try to avoid the players I suspect as much as possible.

I played thousands of hands with these bots, I databased millions of hands from them and even created a comprehensive guide for identifying them, so I was very aware of their tendencies a few years back.

And yeah, many people reported them over the years and the WPN sites and many other networks did a piss poor job at removing them from their tables.

With that said, it's certainly possible for the presence of these bots to have been be due more to incompetence on the part of some of the sites rather than malice. As soon as the Chico network brought in a more competent security team these bots were eradicated from their tables. I believe the same could be said for 888 from what I was told.

Incompetent management being lackadaisical by not taking the issue as seriously as much as they should have, as Phil Nagy stated in his Joey Ingram interview, is certainly plausible, but if you told me there was somebody at these sites actively working with these bot providers it wouldn't shock me either, I just haven't seen proof of that.

i vaguely remember party saying they used in house bots to test something in ff one time (i might just be completely wrong but pretty sure i remember from official party thread), they weren't using them in the actual games, but it does imply the sites are at least broadly aware of the service (even tho in case it was used for a different purpose).

I mean this is the same thing as making a cpu player in your phones backgammon or w/e so it's a legitimate service, but not in real money poker ofc

- One of their business models is the so-called "eco-room". The idea is that the bot uses different strategies against regular and recreational players so that the latter wins and the former loses. The goal is to maximize the poker site's profit. They sign contracts with poker sites.
- Their bots can beat the highest stakes and the toughest pros like LLinusLove, RedBaron etc. (considering these people don't use bots themselves). The bots are used to play the most expensive games in Asian apps.

oh god the riggies were right all this time

Any real solution for this? Only playing on sites complying with countries gaming authorities, or sites known for banning a ton of players with no remorse like GG?

I play poker casually and mostly splash around in micro stakes zoom pools. Come to think of it, I've noticed certain players who are seemingly playing constantly, yet they never move up. They play poorly, but are almost certainly winning money just from recs paying them off and rakeback. Could these perhaps be some poorly coded bots who play really low stakes just to avoid suspicion? The alternative is that some guy has been sitting there 4-tabling 2NLz for 16 hours a day for multiple years.

There is a guy in one of the clubs I play who plays very regularly and generally pretty well at midstakes. Yet he calls 5bet shoves with hands like 84s against recs for 150bb+. Never seen him ool against me or anyone else who is decent, but he punts ridiculously to recs preflop.

I figured he was just easily tilted, advertising to try and get action, giving action to not get booted from the club or worst case he was chip dumping to a buddy to try and generate action and look like a whale. All of those are still more likely than that he is a bot, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was either.

i was approached by on the recruiters of deeplay( they needed a sales guy) like a year ago? or smth, and was like sure, we can talk and they straight said they have b2b and b2c services, but mostly focused on b2b, the product is 3 "robots" , that can play different style depending on the goal. i was like "but players are not aware they play AI? -"NO"
is the goal of those "robots" to win?" "yes and no, depending on BUSINESS GOALS". i politely told them their business goals are a scam.
but they hire developers, pay legal salaries, etc. in any case - shady AF

i mean all software providers have internal stressbots etc, but there is never any ****ing strategy, ranges etc. around them. only to test the system

Any tangible evidence for the general public you can share?

If true seems scary, but apart from naming a person and companies, i didn't see much of a Proof.

Can somebody point me in the right direction? So far I see a lot of confirmation bias.

There might be a chance this is fake, or not the entire story. But the evidence, how long it's happening, the fact bots are real, the story, the incentives. + the fact that most regs in almost any part of the world have options and are not restricted to X, Y or Z sketchy sites. We don´t need definitive, 100% proof to make the decision to just avoid them. Aren´t games known to be tougher, even at low stakes, in sites like ACR? Why would anyone play there having other options? Or play online poker as a reg when this site is their only option? Etc and etc

All proofs are in the Russian language. The strongest ones in my opinion are the following:
- A link to the official registry of Russian companies. There you may find a declared amount of revenue (6 million USD), taxes, names of owners, linked companies etc.
- Ads of these companies on Russian career sites about hiring devs, ML experts, and operators with the description of the company that looks very much like a company that develops a bot in online poker. Like this one
- Screenshots of their internal conversations in HipChat and internal documents describing the internal processes. As far as I know, the OP has even screenshots of the source code.

Also, there are multiple confirmations from people that had direct contact with them like this one
There is strong proof that Anton "Purity" Moiseenkov is one of the founders. He is a well-known coach in the Russian community who plays poker since 2000s. He was one of the owners of a company linked to NeoLab. The proof can be found in the Russian registry of companies.

I only play on stars and rarely play cash. Pokerstars seem like one of the more serious sites. How likely is it that a site like PS and Partypoker is affected by this?

What do you think might be fake? I can assure this company is very real and that they were putting bots on a lot of sites over the last decade, most recently the app clubs as well.

And no, it's not the entire story. The entire story is hard to get because a lot of the information is in Russian and the company obviously isn't going to make all of their information available to public.


These days, for this particular bot distributor? I'd say the chances are low, but in the past this company, and others, had bots on both.

Are these bots on ACR primarily in cash games or are they also in MTTs?

My assumption is that the bots are primarily focused on cash. However, it's hard to say how far these bots have advanced and they are clearly more sophisticated than many imagined. I never delved fully into it, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the MTT bots on ACR were mainly just chip dumping, yes?

I play casually on one of the ring fenced US Pstars sites and have not noticed any suspicious players. Obviously anecdotal and my volume is relatively low so take with a big grain of salt.

Same experience on ringfenced sites ... have not seen any suspicious players. Have played on WSOP NV, Ultimate Poker NV (when it existed), and Pokerstars MI. ACR tons of sus players though...

Someone made a Reddit thread about this and the OP there said that the bots also operate in MTTs. Idk how reliable that info is, but be cautious.

ya whoever posted about this on reddit is dumb now 5000k fish think bots are everywhere. likely this bot farm has a deal with 1 or two sketchy small sites like acr that I would never play anyway. there are zero bots in ringfenced ontario. I think all the major sites do a pretty good job against bots could always be better tho

I think a lot of the developments around botting are directly linked to traffic development; back when stars had an abundance of cash games running, we even had a PLO botring. Nowadays it just seems better bussiness practice from the bot operators point of view to target smaller sites as it's easier to go undeteced. Stars not worth it anymore as the juice is not making up for the higher risk of getting caught.

I was made aware of this post from a friend. I have never even heard of Neolab much less been on some advisory board.