5 sounds right at first, but MTT's get all the spotlight, so I'm not sure.

This is obviously terrible

where are all the PokerStars fanboys these days anyway.

From the other thread:
Thirty-six dollars?
That's not the security team and the customer support dept doing a good job. That's a ****ing insult.

Even if this is true they just get armies of bots to play to play early stages then a decent player to take over end game. Much like the Belarussian/Lithuanian grind house cartels are already doing, except they use ABC 12-8 playing humans early.

Time to find a way ban or segregate the low GDP countries with no fish. It needs to be impossible to make a good living off $10 an hour or they will always find a way to cheat a game thats played on the internet

Why do they support hands and massive multi tabling?

Because it equals more rake.

Everything here is driven by greed and because of that it will eventually perish.

Software created for greed.
People use the software for greed.
It's allowed for greed.

Only at the really high limits do you see the evolution of true skill anymore.

At the same time bots use numbers and anyone not adjusting to their own stats is probably relying on a hud as well.

That's...erm...the biggest benefit of poker for the society. The fact that the smart, but poor people can take the $'s off of the dumb, but rich people. But then the USA got banned, and everything went downhill...
However, problem also likely remains in MTT's to some extent, I agree

The technology to scrape card and pot values into a decision support software exists and there is literally nothing to stop it. Why would anyone think it's not being done when so much money is at stake?

MTTs make it much harder/impossible to collude, seat-script and other exploits. Bots are everywhere.

This is actually a pretty good point, they should hire a permanent forensic data scientist who is monitoring the games.

It shouldn't be that difficult to figure out stat similarities after 20-30k hands and then investigate the players further.

Except that they dont want to slaughter the cow that they milk

Data similarities could "easily" be fixed by just adjusting some ranges by a percent here or there for every bot. 26vpip in MP or 28vpip won't make much difference results wise but would completely avoid detection through similar stats. Throw in a change in flop c/r and river barrell and it won't be detectable as the same bot.

Amen. Micro/low stakes are ****ing ******ed. People playing 15 Vpip and 4 3b for an entire table. They are not poker players. Mindless wastes of life. I will 10/1 to make 1 BB / 100. Ie: 8 cents per hour..... Don't waste your life peeps . There is no benefit.

It makes no sense why they wouldn't do this. Intelligent enough to design a bot that can beat midstakes cashgames but not intelligent enough to realise identical stats in every position makes it glaringly obvious to detect?

I guess it would take lot more time to programm winning bots with different stats, because until now most bot rings had all the same stats, but maybe we didn't catch the really good ones yet...

I present to you, CaptchaFlop © (patent pending)

I'm willing to work with sites as a consultant if a stars rep would like to pm me.

Ergo, they probably are. Likely the overwhelming majority of bot users haven't been detected. And it takes only one or a few people to develop a bot, but once it's in the public domain, it will be used by as many people as can get their hands on it. Some will be dumb enough not to take steps to minimize detection.

wouldnt one way to help reduce a problem simply be random checks eg suspicious accounts get a quiz why did you do play A etc or what would you do in this spot?

I doubt many players would give answers exactly in line with there play I know whilst my game does have a lot of consistently it is not exactly the same each day.

However if i said I you should shove 14% of the time in spot Y when the actual shove % should be 58% of the time and my account is borderline perfect for shoving it would indicate that some thing was wrong.

ultimately the only form of poker safe from bots is live poker or if they build computer units in casinos etc. But then it would be a hard sale why couldn't a poker game client be a black jack roulette one or few machines a roulette table etc.

but then game client can have multiple games to choose from so thats not an issue and I don't think I have ever been down my local casino and seen every gaming machine taken. most are empty.

Any type of captcha is completely useless if you actually follow the botting scene.

one thing is though a lot of blotting can be caught rather simply, you can find bots on youtube and google etc telling you how much they cost and how to use etc.

a simple method to help catch the problem would be to have a member of staff constantly on the look out for it. and then back engineering the software to find traces and signs to loo for etc.

also a bit of espionage and prosercutions etc would dwindle the numbers.

mother****

another fake patent rendered useless

Excellent job. Nice one. I lol'd

Eventually a tipping point has to be reached where Game integrity outweighs that of user privacy. That point has almost certainly arrived now

Stars has again dropped the ball big time here, It's terrible pr and will no doubt look bad on a company trying to enter the US market.

I assume we're not going to hear anything from stars in this thread though?

Humanity is really ****ty sometimes.
Imagine a sweatshop in third world country but the sweatshop's task is to solve captchas and send response back to the bot lol.

Bot detection is something I would love to work on if pokerstars is hiring any grad students lol.

this and segregate russia/eastern europe