Then nobody should play at cash stakes above maybe 200$ for PLO/NLHE or tournaments above 22-55$ BI I guess?

The initial 50k $ investment can be made back within a month by these botters/cheaters EASILY playing these stakes I am positive as I play 100NL cash on Stars and make 200$ /day without going out of my way and without huge efforts.

In games where there are more than just you and a bot (so anything other than HU), there is still a reason to play because you can still produce a winrate. Unless the bots are also colluding i wouldn't expect there to be 5 of the same bots on a ring cash table farming 1 fish. Would be more profitable to have 1-2 on every table but i haven't put that much thought into it so maybe i'm wrong.

I just think about it from a logical standpoint. What are the odds that in some of the highest ring games there are 0 people using any kind of illicit aids? Personally i believe that it is more likely that everyone uses something than nobody

Dear Alex,
This is a real nice thing and should be performed by all poker sites! Great work!

In a word, yes. Screen-scraping bots linked to solver solutions exist in almost all NLH formats (and PLO too?).
Fortunately, most solvers only produce outputs for heads up play with certain stack sizes, so the user of such a bot can only look up the right play for heads up pots (and they often only have the solution to the flop, due to the huge size of the game tree with deeper stacks. Games with large decision trees require more solver processing time, and larger databases of solutions).

MTTs and games with bounties (especially PKOs) are probably the most resistant to botting. MTTs are also the format where exploitative play is generally much more profitable than "GTO", due to the higher proportion of fish and bad regs. That's not to say that there are no bots in MTTs. It's just that MTTs aren't easily solved. (Fluctuating stack sizes are a big problem for "static" solutions).

It's obviously not that simple, those high rake tiny edge games are perfect for poker sites, more profitable and much more appealing to recreationals(where their money really comes from)

I think one point that some people are missing here is how hard is to stop those botters/cheaters. A lot of those non PS sites actually banned a lot of botters in the past, but they just keep coming back with small rolls. A lot of this sites just doesn't have what it takes to stop them, it's not easy, even if they wanted to they wouldn't know how/have the resources to really stop them

Stars is the only site that seems to have managed to make it -EV for the cheaters(at least so far), so if you wanna be (almost)certain that your opponents are playing clean in 2019 you gotta play on Stars

I agree 100% for now... But the end is near. Stars is allegedly going to fire 200 employees from poker division (soon they will announce) and i think majority of the game integrity team will be fired too...

And they sold the company those who also runs ipoker which is one of the biggest botparadise.

Roumours said that in spin and goes the managament protects few HS botters and if you check few trustworthy affiliate sites its in their discription that they dont advise anybody to play those games, so it is probably true. but if you dont belive just try to play those games...

Just imagine 200 good employees will be replaced by the shitiest managment + their team...They will get a site with a 100x bigger player pool. So basically they would not just take the fish rake but their entire roll, that could be a 100 million scam ladies and gentleman...

HU hypers is not a low edge format though and it's actually very high edge when a good reg plays a rec. That being said it's a quite "small game" so solving it is easy and not that many low frequency spots as other games.

Maybe only viable solution is to stop offering them? That's the conclusion WPN came to as far as I know.

Hi Alex!

In your statistics. Total Refunds € 1,090,421. Of these, in August 2018, € 318,784.
Tell us more about this bot blocking. Who are they, from what countries, what games did they play?

Is there any collaboration between Microgaming and other sites to share the information on botting activity/identity of the individuals behind the accounts?

I assume there isn't much between sites, but there should be. Furthermore, I think there should be some more serious repercussions besides just losing your account balance, since it's 2019 and they all probably keep it very low while at the same time these are the guys that have collectively sucked out the most money out of online poker.

Of course, if you outright remove all the higher stakes hu hyper games it's just going to lead to everyone focusing on botting spins, which already happens. But at least with 5% rake and insignificant rakeback, you'd know they wouldn't really thrive. But with all the rake races on spins from other networks it's most likely a goldmine still, since they can easily get 70%+.

Anyone has a link/source to this?

You'd have to make the game exceptionally complex though, otherwise it will be basically solved in a few days/weeks if there's a financial incentive. It's going to be very difficult/impossible to play any type of game for money over the internet unless there is a true or at least semi temporary way to identify AI/algo assisted play.

I think a lot of the sites just assume a same % of bad players will always deposit and play even if they are playing only perfect opponents and even know it. Maybe they are right. For the worst players, they have been playing mostly tables of 5 good regulars and bots down to the lowest of stakes for years. Even more people just happily deposit money into a soulless slot machine/lotto ticket knowing they don't have an edge but think they will still get lucky. Games only run with these players though, and if you eliminate that part of the population, all the games are dead. Or it will be so low volume with just a few bots scooping whats left at .10/.25 (basically dead)

That’s not him, he’s Canadian. Have his Facebook, but pretty sure it’s against 2p2 rules to out him. If it’s not, someone please correct me and I’ll out him

i was in a stable with noqqx a long time ago and he was a coach, he was a great player. it's really shitty but it's to the point where if everyone is doing it it's kind of hard to feel bad. i know it's wrong, i would never bot or do anything like that but i suppose that's just how this format ended in the long run. it was fun in the beginning, but i would put good money that almost all spin "regs" these days even at higher stakes are just clicking buttons and not thinking at all while playing 6+ tables. imagine not having to think and making perfect decisions and just putting on some music while your opponent is thinking about your perfectly executed range.

WPN also completely removed HUSNG that are higher stakes and only allow 1 lobby to be taken at once as well.

I believe Alex wrote about this specific topic a decade ago, but the content link may no longer work due to MPN closing?



From what I remember of the 2010 article, Alex urged collaboration between sites to more efficiently catch these activities -- and share info so cheaters wouldn't be able to so easily maneuver between sites. But then sites could abuse this & report best customers as "cheaters" to rivals (so that their competition doesn't get access to them).

According to Alex, the sharing of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is highly restricted and such collaboration would be difficult b/c of EU-GDPR.

I'm not so sure. Complexity for a human is not always the same as complexity for a bot. I think there have been threads with suggestions before for poker variants that a bot would have a hard time beating or that can't bruteforced with something like pio. Personally I also have no clue if other games such as Stud or whatever may be harder. Obviously PLO is.
Either way, even if you can't stop botting completely or even cheating in general, you can still remove the variants that are most susceptible to abuse, such as limit/short stacked HU hold'em. I think the moment there's a game variant in play that can be essentially solved when people throw enough resources at it then that's a problem. It's also a problem that can only grow bigger as people's databases increase in quality. Someone with mediocre solutions right now may have accurate solutions in 6 months, and someone with good short-stack solutions right now may decide to start computing deep-stack solutions and move from SNG's to cash.

Of course it's not all that easy. I'm well aware that it's best for the sites themself to offer these fast paced, low edge games. Recs may also love them, and other variants may not be that well received, but I don't think you can forever stick to offering turbo HUSNG's and the likes.

All variants are already solved essentially, even PLO. Bots are rampant there as well. It really is not difficult at all anymore, and it won't take as long as 6 months for new games.

You are right that they will remove game types. As someone else said, on ACR they already removed the highest stakes HU sngs already, and only 1 table spawns for the ones slightly lower. While games like limit hold em and 7 card are not removed but completely dead, and have been for a decade. I really don't know what kind of solution there is to all of this. Perhaps you could play a game where the rules change constantly, even to new ones during the moment, and have them never really stay the same, not sure how well it would be received and how it would even work.

Glenn Thompson is 'currrr14' from PokerStars, also known as TapDancingSquid on 2p2/twitter/iPoker and 'soiidogz' on 888.

He is banned on PokerStars.

He ran a bot circle with his friends in Bangkok who are also banned.

Looks like he runs a YouTube channel now:

Looks like he's playing 888 right now:

Glenn Thompson, was a teacher living in Western Canada, who became one of the most prolific cheaters in internet poker history.

His team of bots in spins and husngs stole millions out of the poker community. Him and most of his friends got banned on stars in 2017 so they proceeded to infest the other sites. Party banned him earlier this year, as of right now he is indeed playing on 888. Makes you think that the only reason he started this thread was to get XRAB (who by all accounts has the best bot in the industry) banned on 888.

Glenn Thompson owes the poker community every dollar that he stole. Glenn Thompson is a scammer, and a thief, and should be put in prison. The poker sites should press charges against him and seize his assets. The poker sites should repay all the players who lost millions to these criminals.

Funny story- I met up with him and his friends at a bar in Thailand. I bought the first round of beers, after we finished, him and his friends awkwardly stared at the ground and nobody offered to get the next round. I had the feeling that night at the bar that Glenn and his friends were pathetic losers, and now its clear they are.

By the way Glenn, don't worry about removing or editing the video, I already have it downloaded.

At 6:47:


At 7:22

How can I get in touch with you? You can’t receive PMs.

You can e-mail me at garymilne67@gmail.com

If anyone wants to channel information through me, feel free to e-mail.

How can we get in touch?

Provide some evidence of this or some credible internet information soon or these posts will need to be removed