Max 1 russian/belarussian/ukranian/kazak per table until this is solved

Max 1 per 25entries for zoom as well



Worked in rgds to teh chinese couple of years back

Anything outted on the zoom nl200 side?

I would think a bunch of extremely intelligent guys with plenty of cash playing 1 table for hundreds of thousands are more likely to have some pretty sophisticated software aiding them than a random 100nl table full of unknowns. pretty naive to think otherwise imo

Spot-on!

This is brutal

Would anything run if this was implemented?

Just prevent them from being seated at the same Zoom tables.

And new bots?

Well, at least they need to obtain identities and bank accounts outside Eastern Europe to restart their bot network. Anyway, as we talked about in the HSPLO thread, they desperately need to improve their algorithms for identifying new bots. This bot network was flagrant in multiple ways and it's disheartening that Pokerstars couldn't catch them before they withdrew so much money.

What flips me out is how insignificant this thread is. People are more interested in debating if Timex can beat zoom and piling on Phil Helmuth.

This basically proves online poker is a scam? DGAF. DEALERS WALKOUT HELLMUTT SUX HUZZAR

wouldn't poker stars monitoring everything running on a person's computer prevent them from running a bot?

I don't agree with the bolded either. We're talking about the future sustainability of online poker. if you cannot stop the bots, poker is dead.

+++++01011001 01100101 01110011

Unreal. Well done. Stellar post overall... Arty is killing this thread.

I disagree - Captchas can still reduce bot prevalance.

It adds a lot of complication to a Russian bot owner's life if has to source/trust a stable of Indian Captcha jockeys.

Also, with regard to what other posters said about bots being able to read Captchas - *IF* PokerStars cared enough, they could do a lot more than a simple Captcha. Combined audio/visual Captchas are pretty effing secure.

I find it very had to believe that PokerStars was not aware that there were multiple players who had nearly identical stats, within a few hundredths of a percent, across hundreds of thousands of hands. I don't know what's more likely - that they weren't looking for this, or they didn't care :/

I'll be honest, I'd prefer a site where I had to enter a captcha on every action. Personally I don't play much any more because I ***** hate playing mass multitablers who take the max time on every decision.

I get that a lot of people on this site make their money from multitabling, but I can tell you, it's not very interesting for people who don't multitable. I don't think I've logged in to a poker site in about 3 months... so gg multitablers and bots, job well done.

Following

They can only monitor so much. And all the monitoring has to happen on the users machine and will be observable by the bot operator.
So they run a function to check what urls i have open in my browser - i will just hijack this function and return a nice innocent list that fits my bot's profile.
They want to check if i run on a VM... hijack that function, or much easier, masq your VM.

They run checks for integrity of PS client and make manipulation too hard - move to VM and screen capturing.

They introduce TPM, like a Pokerstars-Playstation - go screen scraping and have a 6axis robot arm clicking the buttons

Same goes for assistive software.

With statistical analysis of play you will maybe catch inexperienced botters who share hole-cards too obvious (always play the same time 9-5)... but especially with large enough bot ring you can work around this issues.

Forget captchas or other constantly running reverse touring test. You can't play zoom poker with a captcha popping up every action now can you?
And then, just imagine you hold the nuts and you fail to call all in because some complicated captcha pops up and you fail the test...

Well at least we now know how often to cbet the various streets and how often to check call e.t.c to crush midstakes.

There will never be a banning of bots. The pokersites only concern is rake generation. Fish will play regardless. Bots prop up games and keep tables full chruning pot after pot. They don't care if nobody human can win playing. Need a quick EPS boost? Bust some bot accounts and confiscate the money. The players who are hurt will never know the true amount and you can offer them a quick panacea to appease/keep the thinking ones playing. Rake, Rake, Rake goes on.

The real solution is MAX1-2 tables, no hand histories, no limits above 100 NL, segregated player pools and constant monitoring but it will never happen because it would not be profitable for the site.

It doesn't have to be reverse turing.

PokerStars have the ability to hire/contract best-in-breed software programmers... people who will be able to figure out a way to provide a somewhat acceptable compromise between security and playability.

Anything would be better than the current state of affairs, right?

Birdwatcher: Bots is a problem to the sites because of the bad reputation it will give. No big site will be willing to risk having their Company name assosiated with such negativities. The single biggest concern for CEOs is taking hits to the Company name. The small extra generated rake is nothing compared.

It seriously concerns me that bots exist on Pokerstars.
Might be time to grind live poker.

if i understand it right ..again the suspects stick out as being top winners at the stakes. so quite naturally there is a something in cheaters that is easy to spot.

find a way to weed out players that play to well.

The only acceptable result from a successful collusion investigation should be a refund to the player pool of what the cheating players has taken out of the games, net winnings + rake. They currently seem to just divide up the cheating players balance, which is a completely arbitrary amount and should have no affect on the amount of refunds that is given.

Captcha's and stuff are almost a waste of time. There are a lot of reports of these bots chating. You design a bot and run him on a laptop beside your computer, and pay an eastern european kid 5 euro's an hour to input and chat. It would beat every captcha and mouse/timing indicator easily.

I think the following post is relevant to quote here, in light of the obvious parody video posted above (they went a little heavy on the dryness of the humor):

what good does it do to play against a "confirmed human" if that human is just inputting computer aided decisions? This is where online poker has been headed from day 1. Botting isnt as much cheating as its the inevitable endpoint where hud advancements have been taking us for years.

The "solutions" I see offered here might buy online poker as we know it an extra year or 2 but, essentially, the gig is up. Computers will play better than people do at every poker variant shortly. This will be widely publicized as it was in Chess. Randos showing up to drop decent money online, money that someone else can make a living off, will cease to exist. Online poker will go the way of chess outside private groups or online "home games". Some pools will self segregate for protection.

The REAL problem is computer aided decision making sneaking into live poker. It could basically end casino poker completely. Casino poker as a viable profession, live and on-line, is very sensitive to even small changes in the rec/pro balance because of rake considerations. In the near future its likely poker could go back being a game mostly played by friends/acquaintances in private settings for social time more than money. Of course there will always be money to be made by the motivated rounder as one mans "social fun" is another mans mortgage payment.