Interestingly, video game companies are allegedly employing matchmaking systems which primarily aim to maximize “player retention” rather than simply create fair matches. Instead of players naturally settling to a 50% wr around their skill level, the game artificially creates winning and losing scenarios to keep players “on the grind” so to speak.

The game Fortnite matches you against loosely disguised bots for your first 3 matches, maybe this is for calibration purposes but it also gives players a false sense of achievement right out the gates. The bots aren’t clearly marked as bots and named in ways such that new players could easily mistake them for other new players.

I do admire the ingenious nature of it all. It probably wasn't as common in the US given betting sites were illegal but back in the day finding these type of unknown sites connected to some random euro sportsbook was a very common occurrence and often they had segregated pools on the network or in some cases they had completely self contained poker sites. Poker was such a huge draw back then, sinking money into it as a loss leader was a regular occurrence The sites were like goldmines for a decent player with a steady supply of awful players and overlays all over the schedule in tournaments. Anyone coming across a site like this today probably initially thinks they have discovered a hidden gem. Instead your on some kind pokerbot Truman show. The app games must have been completely infested with this stuff.

Haha yup. My friends and I stumbled upon a Costa Rican sportsbook called 5dimes which hosted some poker games. Might have found it through 2p2 actually.

Last time I played on the phone app games there was absolutely no security to prevent collusion. The only people I know who got rich from app games are those who ran them.

I hadn't actually read through the other GG Detecting Bots thread until I seen TylerRM (Andre Streltsov) mentioned in some of threads MCACh posted. There is a whole host of other interesting info in that thread.

so what you're telling me is once Riggy & ACR's algo determines you've won 'enough', the coolers & 1-outers start coming (a.k.a. doomswitch)?
We're just all 'rigtards' though!

There is no insinuation that the RnG is manipulated. In the hypothetical, the site is using bots that cater to the different players needs in a more holistic approach to poker. If you are a rec the bots plays quite nice, you win a little, you lose a little, but if your a winner, then they might not take kindly to that and instead ramp up the aggression and a play a little tougher. Its all about balancing the ecology of the ecosystem to provide a longer more fun playing experience for everyone involved without anyone other than the site taking too much money from each other.

Yes, the rigtards may have been right after all

Why you gotta make us guess which site you're referring to?

Personal opinion but it is obviously Stars. I am not even sure in the current landscape they are able to protect players but I at least know they are trying, have a huge security team and definitely aren't engaged in the really shady stuff like these prop bots.

Global Poker uses a similar argument for not allowing HUDS or HH. It's a "Social" casino. Tracking any of that data on your own is against TOS.

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I think we'll likely never know whose involved or the full extent. The only wise decision is to drain online accounts and go play live.

Even if the websites are outed in full; Nothing of benefit will occur. Nobody will get their losses back, No meaningful ban will occur on the accounts, No site will take any responsibility or make any move that resembles holding themselves accountable. They'll probably even blame the players; maybe even mock them on forums, or make bot accounts to promote their website.

(IIRC, Global Poker CEO did mock a high roller during the recent GTOWizard scandal with project baby. Called him a 'gold coin greg' )

I recently asked for my hand history from GP, and GP said 'sure, just provide (personal) information'. I provided the info; they then messaged me and said 'unfortunately we can't provide the hand history'.

What's interesting is that when I first started playing on GP, I talked in chat to a guy who was essentially telling me the premise of an 'eco-room' but in a more conspiracy minded manner. He said something akin to 'They keep the fish happy; by taxing the winning players' (not exact quote). Very interesting that the 'riggies' are so close to proven concepts of these operations.

Does ACR have the most Russians?

I am not playing online with all this and the difficulties playing in the US. I know some others can beat online games.

Good read

But not in the way they thought. In fact, given what was reported is true, they may have been helped (if you take the baseline assumption that almost all rigtards are losing players) by matching them with weaker bots. And as you said no indication that the RNG was fraudulent.

I could be way off base with this post but given all the information that has come to light, is it likely all these interconnections that were being noticed like in posts here and here is as a result of these bots winning and losing based on the other players?

It gets somewhat more nuanced because some of the rigtards are winning players made losing players, so how do we then bucket them? It is kind of genius for the site because these now just come off as bitter losers. Its all incredibly sinister because superusers/RnG issues are huge red flags normally, you get such outliers to the data it can be noticed quite quickly.. This type of stuff is a silent killer where everyone is getting raked to death. It would take huge in-depth analysis of massive amounts of data to uncover and draw any kind of meaningful conclusions because for any individual players it probably looks like they are just running bad/playing bad and recs don't care about the data.

GG removing the ability to track data reducing game transparency & integrity is a huge red flag for them.

Transparency in Poker: A Call to Action for the Community by Jason Glatzer.

Edit - I can't get Joeys Tweet to show up so I just quote tweeted his reply from X.

I keep coming back to this thread waiting for people to chime in to read their thoughts on the whole mess, but they're all so collectively jaded they can't even be f'd to comment.

it's behind a paywall

still winning in pool, would rather less bots so i win more, but whatever

Here's the article without a paywall:

https://archive.is/jj1AQ

It’s a well written article but the gist of it is all common knowledge.

I guess myself and others hoped we would see more posts like this from people with more intimate knowledge because the whole thing is fascinating.

While most knew bots were a thing, I think the sheer scale of it surprised most who hadn't been following this story closely on the forums. I think the follow up article about the liquidity bots/eco room stuff wasn't something I had heard before this all became pubic. Still beating the games response seems rather dumb, given this is the worst the technology will get and the problems will only increase from this point. I would say that article will have spawned many more motivated individuals to see the opportunities in this market.

fwiw, I did a little digging around the software available. I found what is 99% likely the software from the article, it works on all major poker rooms apart from PS. It is kind of interesting that they are very upfront about the fact you need to know quite a bit about poker (theory, how to play at a decent level), be technically savvy and do quite a bit of work to get up and running. Mots of the hacked together RTA solutions that I found people selling are specifically built for GG.

IIRC, there was suspicion regarding GG and use of these liquidity bots. It’s unfortunate that people in the past probably tried to disclose information but were disregarded as rigtards. Not speaking about anyone in particular, but I think the community has been willfully ignorant about the scale of cheating, including bots in the online scene. A lot of the signs have been there forever and people just don’t want to face reality. There is a lot of incentive for various reasons to keep a tight lid on these accusations.

The last bit is interesting but expected. There’s always a balance between ease of use, effectiveness, and ability to avoid detection.

Very good article.

The movie version was Terminator.