Hi! two days ago i have heard about a high stakes player being reported by their flatmates for using RTA. Aparently he had two PCs, two sets of keyboard and mouse. In one PC he had all the tables, while in the other PC he had thousands and thousands of sims of all possible cash game spots presolved in a well organize set of folders, to be able to just open the sim and follow the solver advice in every single spot. Apparently he was playing GGpoker, PS and the main lobbies, and no one could detect that.

Well a few things came to my mind.
First of all, thinking about the setup, i guess is literally impossible to be detected. I just thought about two possible ways to be detected and i guess is quite easy to avoid them.

First of all, mouse movement. Well, if you get quite a big skill for moving the mouse with your left hand at the same time that you move your right one, this becomes quite impossible to detect. Also if that is not the case, you can always have one or two guys by your side with the side PCs to be inputting the spots in the solvers. Then no possible fraudulent mouse movement can be detected.

Second, it can be detected by checking deeply the game. Lets say there is a barrier where human brain cant get, and lets say this barrier could be set by some kind of AI or some algorythm...even if that AI or that algorythm ever exists, you could just mix playing with RTA and without it by days, or by hours, or even by spots. Lets say Monday Wednesday and Friday you use RTA and the rest of the days you play legit without it. Or even you get RTA for 1 spot out of 2. If i am not wrong, that is literally impossible to be detected.

So if i am not wrong, at the end of the day the decission of using RTA or not comes just as a moral thing. In a way i see it like if you are playing at the Bellagio, and the Dealer tells you: "Hey boy, you can have a look at the river card before dealing it and playing the turn, 100% no one will know, but you have to decide if that is morally correct or not".

So please i ask every poker player (professional or not) to think about this.

First i would like to know your opinion about if using RTA can be detected by sites in any possible way, and second and much more important:

I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU FOR POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS AND IDEAS TO AVOID CHEATERS USING RTA.

Sorry for the capital letters, but this is the main point of this thread and my goal is to get something going on from here, and have a group of relevant poker players transferring the solutions and ideas to Poker sites.

Well in case you dont know me, im TUTI88, i have been playing cash games for more than 10 years now, both online and live. Still playing online, and actually moving back to .com lobbies next month ( i was living back near home for couple of years)

Well here is my best idea for casinos to implement:
I was thinking about a device that casinos would sent us (they would have to develope this, but is super easy and zero cost) via postal code, consisting of a cam with wifi.
First of all, this device would only be sent to players suspects of using RTA. This group would include: solid winners, players that solid winners report ( lets say a new guy jumps into 50/100 games and plays quite solver like). This way we avoid recs to have to do this (so recs can play as normal as always).
The procedure would be as follows: when you open your poker session, you have to turn on the device, having to make a 360 of the room you are grinding in, and then leaving the cam on in a place that all the screens you are using can be spotted at all time, with audio recording. Then when you finish your poker session, you press a button that automatically sends the video to the casino support.
This is one minute work for the player, super easy to do for casinos, super cheap, and recs would not be involved. Also is super easy for casinos, because they can just check one video of each player every three months for example, because NO ONE would send a video cheating...(lol). So basically the thing is having to do this, or you just cant play. Lets say if the cam is not on, you just cant log in ( is just an idea)

Well this is my first idea, it can be improved a lot, and also has leaks.
For example, a leak is that the player has an invisible earpiece, then the PCs are sharing screen to somewhere else where a person has the dreammachine RTA and says via earpiece to the player what to do. But this would be quite difficult as communication is not possible... so it would be not easy to execute.
I would like some ideas to fix the "earpiece leak". I will dedicate lots of time to think about this.

I have the contacts and media to make a great consensus with all high stakes and mid stakes regs, then get to poker sites and be really listened.

Lets get this going guys, and save online poker! GL US

TUTI88

5 secs timebank

who was the player cheating and what is his stars name ?

Ask someone into chess how they made the Magnus tour hapen, I m sure they had some system like that in place to prevent the use of solvers. Would be sick if we can get that in place for gg.

+1

they use two cameras: one in front of the player for stream and one behind the player for organizers to check that the player won't use engine on separate computer. chess and poker is not really comparable cause it takes many many years to get to the top in chess and player's reputation is huge. if you get caught in chess cheating your career is over, nobody will invite to any tournament ever.

In poker if you get caught by the right guys it turns into a lucrative gig.

how about 10 seconds period(no time bank) , nothing more nothing less. kinda like bullet chess.
you'd get 200 hands an hour with that.

Two answers to this:

1). For high level FIDE online chess tournaments people are required to have two webcams, one showing their face and the other from behind them showing that they aren’t getting any assistance

2). They run algorithms to detect cheating as well. A lot are proprietary, but it has to do with looking at the percentage of the time the person chooses the best move when there are 2 legit options and chooses one of the two best moves where then are 3 options, etc. Even the best players in the world will not approach 100% on these tests so there is no concern about ceiling effects.

The problem with poker is that there isn't a known solution for it to compare a player Vs like there is in chess

Can you expand on this? If I'm understanding this second point, preventing this action would be a matter of analyzing thousands of hands for tendencies and patterns, thus revealing overall evidence of RTA usage.

If that's correct, this seems much, much easier said than done, if for no other reason than a good RTA would be as close to GTO play as possible, meaning there would be no tendencies to detect.

That said, I suppose overall stats might make things easier to spot. e.g. to use your example, a player is a more LAG 27/25 on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, but a 16/14 TAG on the other days, week after week.

But again, I might be completely misunderstanding you on this one.


Yeesh, I didn't realize Bellagio hired old racist plantation owners.



But seriously, I like the others' clock-related solutions, although maybe have ultra-short timers with longer banks. The latter is to still allow players to make legitimately tough decisions, but the former would discourage RTA usage.

Funny, I play a mobile golf game on my iPad all the time, and I can always tell when I'm playing against someone using a shot calculator. (Yes, these exist... I've tried them. There are various resources in which people can enter the yardage, wind, lie, plus the specs for both the ball and club, thus yielding the aiming point. And they work quite well, although it forces a mobile player to have their computer nearby. I'm almost never playing in such a location.)

These players always take a good 20-30 seconds longer than others, simply because they're entering all of the relevant info before they even begin to aim their shot. If the software reduced the timer, these shot calculators would be almost impossible to use.

Granted, when it comes to online poker, I'm not experienced enough to know exactly how RTA works in, well, real time. However, if they're all like the ones for the golf game, then the bullet chess equivalent would seem to be a good remedy.

life in the panopticon? no thanks

He must have been a really bad flat mate to be reported and banned on every site by his roomates?


or owed them a bunch of money lol


What was his screenname? Seems if you open sims in pio and had very strong organization it could definetly be done while playing albeit quite difficult multi tabling with how quick timebanks runout

You know chess is far from being solved as well right?

why does any human play poker on the internet anymore?

(unless you are using AI, or in this case, acting as a cyborg)

To make money and have fun

Lots of money to go around still

I don't really see a good way to stop this. Any procedures that may stop it end up being invasive and discouraging legitimate players from online poker. I assume sites that are serious about stopping cheating already have their own database solutions for most game formats. If a player makes perfect decisions 100% of the time they can take action. Other than that, there's really not much that can be done.

at least we'll always have MTTs since cash game is going to ****

because live poker absolutely sucks.

Force people to act very very fast at all decision points. People obviously won’t be able to play their best under these conditions, but the playing field will be level, and RTA running on a second machine would be a non-issue. Change the game into who can make the best decisions given 3 seconds to think about them.

3 seconds? will be impossible to play more than 1 table haha

It's a very tricky situation, because it is virtually impossible to prove someone is cheating.

I don't agree with the super short timebank. A game of poker should be a comfortable experience, and recreational player also wouldn't like being rushed into making 5 second decisions.
It is overwhelming, leads to more misclicks and just less fun overall.

The good news is that solvers like PIO have been around for 6 years or so I believe, and the amount of players at high stakes poker I suspect of cheating is under 10.
To be fair, and I am not saying the player in question was cheating because I have no proof/suspicions about him, definitely was not on my list of potential cheaters.
There's a handful of guys I'd say are far, far more likely to be cheating.

But if the online poker scene isn't infested after 6 years, I doubt bots will take over and the worst we'll have to deal with is a cheater here and there taking money out of the game.

At lower stakes, it's much easier to remain anonymous and create a winning strategy.

I think a big obstacle is sites not caring enough (a lot of them make more money from betting/casino).
And secondly, security teams not being prepared nearly enough - heard on party they just ban you if you have PIO open, ok wp

It is important to acknowledge combating RTA effectively takes a lot of resources and effort from the sites. So first BIG step would be convincing them it's worth it.

I could be wrong with my math and logic, but for anyone thinking about cheating by using in-game assistance, I don't think it's worth it for almost anyone.

Let's say you've won at 3bb/100 for the last 3 years at high stakes. You're a solid winner.
If you start using RTA on multiple tables, you'll play much more slowly. It also doesn't factor in adjustments versus your opposition.
If you now win at 6bb/100 but play half the amount of hands because you play fewer tables and play more slowly, it's a break even 'investment'.

Other factors:
-If you get caught, you stand to lose potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars
-You lose future EV by not being able to play anymore
-You need to spend 100+ hours developing the program and sims, which you could spend actually playing
-Spend tons of money renting servers, hiring a coder, paying people off to stay silent
-Stress of being caught


So unless you start winning far, far more money than you were before, I don't even think it's even +EV.
If you are an old school reg with a huge bankroll who is now break even but could win at 5bb/100 using software, it probably would be worth it.
But for most players, it simply isn't.

Oh dammit, yeah... that is the No. 1 problem with the sped-up clock solution. Players would have to play fewer tables at a time, which diminishes the hourly rake the site collects, which in turn means they are disincentivized to make this adjustment at all.

By the way, somewhat loosely related to this thread, I spent almost all day writing up trivia questions for a contest. (Just a little something for our season tickets to keep them engaged in a fall season with no actual on-field competition.)

Since the people would be playing from home, I made it a point to write questions that would be really hard to look up through Google. This RTA subject was in the back of my mind the whole time – so much so, that probably wouldn't have thought to do that if I hadn't started my day by reading this thread.