Tournament bots would the easiest by far, it would be the hardest/most impossible to collude(mtts) but it shouldnt be hard to bot.

Bots beat NLHE up to NL2000 years ago. They beat zoom PLO200 in 2014/15. What makes you think they can't beat MTT aka the softest form of poker?

So do these bots play ante games, and 300bbs+ deep and stuff like that?

Few random thoughts
All the smaller networks like ipoker and party must be flooded with bot
Sites cant probably do much about it
NLHE must be flooded with bots too, in 2012 rumors about winning bots were already there
I don't see why tournament bots wouldn't work if they are beating fullstacks midstakes plo
Management of pokerstars obviously really worried about this stuff. They are quiet, they also went silent in the automated software HUSNG thread - this **** is delicate.
Isai sheinberg got out right on time! who would have guessed..
New boss of stars needs to be careful were he is wishing for, that poker 25% of total revenue number might happen soon.
Short pokerstars
Pokerstars security is seriously lacking and should be fined or something wtff, i'm so surprised that somebody with limited resources is able to gather so much information. much respect!

LOL I asked them some questions and Im pretty sure I just got copypasta'd by their support right? (Didnt file a report, LOL)

The email answers none of my questions.

lol @ nearly identical postflop stats over millions of hands and pokerstars doesn't notice.

maybe hire a data scientist with the millions in rake you took from the bots & cheated players.

their investigation is a sekrets O K?

I understand HUDs do not equal the programs Bots are using, but if all third party software were to be banned would it be more difficult for the Bots to operate?

well if hud stats are used to detect bots and people programming/using bots are computer experts I would assume it would make it immensely easier.

No, just harder to detect.

This is disturbing

The only thing that surprises me about this whole thing is that the bots are already advanced enough to crush PLO200 and possibly higher. Other than that this comes as no surprise at all.

This comes as no suprise. And lol at anyone thinking MTTS are not riddled with bots too

Something has to be done, this has to be addressed by Pokerstars. As the industry leader it's their responsibility to handle these issues. What they need to do is gather all the data on the players they're banning and start graphing response times vs normal humans, timebank usage, whether they're playing in the same games, click locations, processes on the comps, hours played (as in which hours how consistently), country, perhaps even winrate. There's a lot of data on these players that PS has access too, and should be able to use to increase their security measures against them in the future, as they will undoubtedly be back.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what else can be done. Perhaps PS could pursue legal action, make a few examples to put some fear out there. Not sure how feasible that is, but we have to find a way to stem the tide of bots.

The only thing sites can do is hand out harsh penalties i.e big fines maybe even jail time and hope that deters cheats. Although it would be hard to get enough evidence to prosecute.

Can you imagine what is going on at the micros where people arent so clued up on stats etc it must be riddled.

Sad times for online poker but thank you to everyone that has contributed and bought this to light lets hope Pokerstars break there silence soon and have some sort of solution.

Cash and SnG's are games where a few small mistakes have nearly no influence on the long-term results. Fold to a min-bet, whatever... Tables can be chosen freely, and collsuion is easy as 123. That's a slightly different story in MTT's, where you often play for equity of 50x or even more of your buy-in in one hand during late-game...

I have no doubts that a bot can somehow beat MTT's, even without the benefit of card-sharing, but once ICM becomes a factor, and stacksizes differ heavily on full tables, there are just way too many factors to sufficently program a bot to play in them. And there is no big rakeback to collect for bots in MTT's.
Bots are build to be as close to GTO as possible, afaik, and that works disgustingly well in Cash and SnG's with their static and repetitive format, but except during the earliest stages of a tournament, GTO means nothing. It's all about exploiting the table, the opponents and their styles, making use of the different stack-sizes.

MTT's are simply the softest format of poker, because they attract the biggest percentage of fun-players. But the skillset that you need to play close to perfect in MTT's combines those you need for cash and SnG's, and adds a lot difficult spots (ICM-, opponnent(s)- and stack-size-dependend) in late-game and at the final-table...

I simply don't think that all possible spots could be put into a bot for MTT's.
Who knows, I strongly doubt it.

Poker Stars has essentially promoted the use of bots for many years. They promote the use of huds so that people will mass multi table. All they have to do is change the formatting of hand history readouts on a random, regular basis and bots and huds will no longer be able to read what is going on. The bots would automatically sit out the next hand until they figured out the new codes. Rinse and repeat. Poker stars problem is, to get rid of bots you also have to get rid of huds. For some reason pokerstars wants huds and bots.

Pokerstars has killed online poker.

^^^^ **** pokerstars

Great post and spot on. And people wonder why 'poker is dying'.... I give poker online (NLH anyway) another ten years before its extinct.
It makes me cringe when I hear these pro's and coaches say 'study' more, when In fact what they mean is learn the new Hud stats, learn how to re-exploit this stat and that stat.

Fact of the matter is, that if somebody did an expose documentary on what these pros and regulars use in terms of software verses those who do not (fish, recs, those who are clueless) the masses would be calling for blanket bans and prosecutions

^^Another reason why MTT's are way superior. I have a good example for that, I think:
There are guys like (deleted name), who play a really nitty style early in MTT's. But when he just has a few deep runs left, he opens up and plays +30% of his hands, and the featherbrained part of his HUD-using opponents get confused, because they only have like a few hundred hands of early levels against him in their data-base, with him playing 13-14% of his hands, but suddenly he 3-bets each of their open-raises on the final-table bubble.

Almost daily revelations for years how online poker fleeces the masses and still people think something can be done?

There really is a sucker born every minute. Either that or the fleecers are posting like crazy on 2+2.

So wrong..
1) You can buy hands
2)You can right know use icmizer/HRC 2 know whats the right play with shallow stack... ICM etc
3) There aint much postflop play
4) U realy dont have to be that balanced
etc..
5) harder 2 get caught

The only way I can think of to avoid the preflop/dead card collusion is to reshuffle the folded cards back into the deck after someone folded. So utg would be dealt their cards, if they folded, then and only then would utg+1 be dealt hole cards. It would slow up the game a lot (reduce poker stars' rake so obv it will never happen) and it might be weird to see As come up on the flop after you folded it preflop, but it would guarantee protection against this type of collusion.

I think, i am a decent programmer and I am a winning poker-player. I think, I could programm a bot in like 2-3 monthes, that would beat at least nl25 zoom. With the help of 1-2 friends and maybe 1-2 good players, we would be able to design some piece of software that would be profitable after a couple of months for ALL of us. Just think about how extremly profitable that sound and the WORST that can happen to you, is actually ýour account is banned and money confiscated. That is so few risk for just a potential big reward...
If I would have the time and there would a legal way to do actually proof it, I would bet on it. So, there are alot of ppl out there, who are better at poker and/or better programmers, so there will always be bots out there. Its just too lucrative and I dont think, you can blame pokerstars much here...

Why would banning huds help? You know, that especially bots would still have huds and stats and all other players dont? No one can detect anything, except your pokersite and as we can see, thats no solution.

I guess, we really have to think more out-of-the-box to really face the problem. Like maybe identify players by using designed pokerstars-mouses, which have a fingerprint and the stars software really tracks, if the mouse is used. Something like this, would help for the clicking but you can still have software which gives you advices and what not...
I guess, with some brainstorming there could be ways and I actually think, ppl would pay like 20$ for such a mouse or other kind of devices. Maybe there could even be some kind of alliance between sites to create such a device...
There are actually alot of ways the more I think about it... just saying

a few quick fixes,

make the flop a captcha

randomly alter the view/layout of the table.

cut off players from russia

put on your thinking caps, guys

It's over. It will carry on for another decade or so, but it's over.