Hello!

This is My first post here, as you might guess i am swedish. I hope you excuse My english, which isn't very good, espescially when it comes to translating the exact correct judicial terms.

Today seven people were charged here in Sweden with fraud, for running pokerbots at the swedish state gaming company "svenska spel". According to the prosecutor, they made 2 million swedish kronor, around 300 000 dollars, during about a year, ranging 1st januari 2012' until februari 2013. This is according to swedish news agency TT.
However, the culprits also run the bots in other sites, such as Fulltilt, Bodog, Ladbrokes, Everest. On these sites they made about 8million swedish kronor, about 1.2 million dollars. At "svenska spel" they had the bots On the lowest games, 0.25/0.5 swedish kronor to maybe as "high" as 5/10 swedish kronor. I would say thats is about 0.04/0.08 dollars to 0.8/1.6 dollars, and only no limit Texas holdem.
At svenska spel you have to have a swedish citizenship to play, and they got friends and relatives to sign to get about 15 accounts.
I have some screen names fr.o.m. Svenska spel that were supposed to be bots, they disappeared after the bots were discovered, and were winning players (bots). Smultroll, jestanes, Obaman, buddha299, adamp. These are five that i can recall, however they can for sure have used different screennames On other sites. Do someone remember bot-like players that disappeared during februari, march or april 2013? For some reason they were able to continue bot-playing On foreign sites, maybe because som ****up by the prosecutor or by some relatives/friend that did't get caught.
The court date in Sweden are very likely not be dunig the summer, but perhaps in the fall, since it. is a LOT of money involved. According to news agency TT, the prosecutor has NOT informerad the foreign gaming companies, WHO therefor might be unaware of this.

not surprising at all, but thanks for posting this!

pretty sure there are still tons of bots or bot-supported humans in todays nlh ringgames. they were beating 5/10 and higher 3 years ago...

can you link to your source? eg swedish newspaper etc?

On the phone, so wont dig up more, but this stuff were all over Swedish media a year ago or so when they got "busted".

A well known serious paper in Sweden reporting it early on here ; (dagens nyheter mobilpage)

http://mobil.dn.se/ekonomi/storfuska...ka-spel/?brs=d

Ah yeah I heard about this a year ago. What kind of penalties can they face ? Can they also be prosecuted for the botting on Stars/FTP etc... or only for the one on svenska spel ?

Either way, thanks for bringing it up

not suprising Bring on the bots, overbet ftw,

Poker-AI.org

here's a site dedicated to creating poker bots, they claim stars security virtually has no control over them either.

Out of all the sites you can run a bot on, the one owned by the government has to be a bad choice when it comes to avoiding harsh penalty for it. That said SVS is the softest site on the internet so that might explain it. It probably also has really ****ty security.

The prosecutor has, as far as I have understod, "limited" his investigation into the potentially crimes committed at state gaming company svenska spel... Big surprise! So, as far as I Know, the other sites are unaware. I actually think the prosecutor hasn't even called the other gaming companies. Which sucks of course.

Thanks. As Sweden runs a state monopoly of legal online poker it is as you say not surprising that the investigators did not look at foreign based sites or even talk to them much.

I would hope that they did pass on the screennames but maybe not.

Please keep us up to date on the Swedish media coverage of this, the language barrier if in Swedish is huge for searching but links to Swedish sites which we can use dodgy translation software on would help.

My understanding from a year ago is that Svenska Spel compensated the effected players and that the government are seeking to recover the money from the fraudsters as well as secure the conviction.

The compensation was about $586k to about 25,300 players.

http://www.bluffed.net/news/20130620...cheating-scam/

Your media report seems to be using the earlier Feb 2013 estimate rather than the June payout figure.

There was a group of Swedish bots that left Winning Poker Network around April of 2013. I think it had more to do with a thread started and players calling them out than them just leaving.

The different numbers of money comes from the fact that "svenska Spel" compensated each player for the players individual loss versus the bots. Therefor that amount is higher than the amount that the bot-makers made as a profit (some players of course won against the bots).
I think that the bot-gang cashed out around 2 million swedish kronor, around 300 000 dollars, but that the losses for the players were the double, about 4 million Swedish kronor, about 600 000 dollars. There might be a third number flying around in media, since Svenska Spel is seeking money from the bot-gang to cover their cost for the investigation (hired consultants and so on, svenska spels security of course sucks).

As for the possible penalty. The key question is if it is a crime to run these bots, and if its a fraud. Thats not certain. They certainly broke the terms and conditions at svenska spel, but thats not the same as breaking the law.
But, my guess is that if the do get comvicted, they are looking at jailtime, but not that long (less than a year).
I think the most damaging thing in that conviction would mean the financial loss. The prosecutor has seized 10 million kronor (about 1,5 million dollars) in cash and stocks, and they would loose that money if they are convicted.

this the same lot originally behind snowie?

yeah played vs. a lot of Swedish bots 2 years or so back. mainly short stacking 20bbs. very happy to see some justice.

my site has a ****ton of bots and i provided proof (top 10 site on pokerscout) and the network guarantees me that they are legit players.

Networks love their bots.

I should point out that although this site is about poker AI, it is not necessarily dedicated solely to creating illicit bots to be run on poker sites!

There are a good number of posts made by people doing stuff for University research projects and Tysen Streib (the author of several poker books) also posts their from time to time.

Since the old Poki Poker forums and yahoo group went offline, it's probably the best (only?) remaining place to go for discussion about poker AI.

Juk

this is probably more widespread than even the most open minded poster may think

Wow, really good to hear. I thought every single one of these guys involved w/ botting would walk away free men.

I think we've all learned something about the poker world. If you're going to steal, operate a poker room. Don't play on one.

Turns out they just have

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/0...raud-24140.htm

Open season for Bots in Sweden, no offence, no fraud.......BS

poker is a game of chance, not guilty!

yes they are not guilty of a crime in our government eyes, however they still break t&c and got their money confiscated. Which is a acceptable risk as I see it that you can work around by just having the minimum at accounts at all times and consistently cash out. sad news.

I opened this thread out of curiosity since I have no intention of ever playing online again unless the U.S. gets a large player pool and I can play stud games but I've got to ask: How is it possible to win that kind of money playing those stakes?

Well, bots don't get hungry or tired, so there's that.

Even if they ran them 24/7 I wouldn't believe it if not that it actually happened. And, btw, how can a site not become suspicious of players winning that kind of money at very low stakes?

It wasnt by chance and it can likely be proven. And quilty they were but if they won with bot skill wasnt proven. That wasnt some nosebleed variance year.

The amount of hands the bot played? Would need also that the player had all that time to play, like the bot was playing when the nick was at work or and sleeping. It was likely proven the bots played the same etc. And it proves they were bots.

The breaking of rules happened, that was accepted i think, but is that illegal? If it is, isnt it like a failed attempt of crime, like i go and try to rob a bank but fail? I wont need to pay back the money then but i am not walking out a free man.

At least it isnt a crime to run a gaming bot though it generally breaks against the rules. Lots of things are more or less legal though they are not acceptable, and much of them in the business world but not only there. Generally, cheating is not a crime, it needing something additional like clear stealing, that it though often is but need to be proven the cheat wasnt just an imbecil, etc.

If the regulations do not soon lead to more serious punishments, one can only hope detection improves and the botters not welcomed to other sites then either, that makes it risky at least for amateurs. Stars should ask documents from suspected botters, and in regulated countries one should use ones bank account, like is generally the case.

You don't get how bad people are at the lower stakes of SVS. Like, you can't actually fathom the winrates achievable if you simply-don't-do-dumb-****. That combined with 24/7 bots running on multiple machines and you get this

also the rake is ~50% of the second least raked site today. They had 16 accounts, idk how many they used at the same time, due to offhours etc but prolly all 16 during peaks and they played ~12 hours a day.