Agreed I have no time for Russians/the Eastern Bloc.

However, the US market had its fair share of cheating scumbags.

Where do we draw the line?

bodog banned em years ago... thank god

The reason Russians are not banned on poker stars is because there's a decent amount of Russian recreationals frequenting the site.

There's no such thing as a Russian recreational

Interesting that someone who is a 2p2 member from 2007 and still has this way of thinking about poker.. I understand you prefer live above online because online you will put in more volume and that impacts your -ev play style which is less obvious live

And in what world is online slower then live?!

Agreed, insta software works good

I didn't realise they already posted it on 2p2:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=3355

that gordon guy seems likes he could battle john edward for the biggest douche in the universe award

Is this sort of stuff allowed on twoplustwo? Might want to delete that post and that "coaches" post as well.

Obvious real time software exist but I do not think they have so much power to turn any medium stake player into a high stakes god. 40and7, oborra or whatever hgihstakes... Iam almost sure behind this bots there were good poker players. Example: I imagine this program can turn a 200z 4bb into a 7bb winner at 200z but won't turn this guy into a 25/50 reg.

Should be banned off course but I do not think this programs give you a huge boost in your skills.

ps: this is only my guess. I do not have a clue about tecnology/computer.

RE BOTS:

Actually, this type of software can turn a complete novice into the toughest player at the highest stakes with no effort. All they do is follow the advice. No decision making involved.

turning from 4bb winner at 200zoom to 7bb is also massive accomplishment, and the idea that this is available to the public is very frightening

Can't they be persecuted for some sort of internet fraud and cyberhacking?

Unless they lived in a pretty rogue country in Africa or the Middle east, all would be fearful of justice and police action including in estern europe if there was any sort of measure against them.

We're talking about billion dollar companies, if it hurts business could be time to go for more hardcore actions.

I remember they quickly turning to lawyers to ban payment to players behind vpn's, this kind of stuff is much worse for the business longterm.

Authors of said software may be hard to catch, but people who use it have to share identificaton and bank account or card number to cashout.

Though in the grand scheme of things it's probably better not to publicise it, in there lies the problem. I don't think party sharing what they are doing helps much, and I have the impression stars security catches many more bots, prohibited software and collusion than any other site and they keep silent about it. So this thread is probably also a net negative for the game overall.

You can persecute them, such as what people are doing in this thread, but to no effect. But prosecuting them is another story since I don't think it is a crime in most (if any) jurisdictions.

They're not hacking. They're using the same interface everyone else uses. And I am not aware of it being illegal anywhere. It is against the sites' terms of service, but that doesn't mean it is breaking any laws.

Which group is this? It should be public knowledge if a large group of people are cheating. At the very least, I hope you provide the major sites with information on this.

I posted the link above.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...2&postcount=57

Agreed. There are plenty legit guys from those places, but it's incredibly obvious that a very significant percentage of them (at mid-higher stakes) have been using real time assistance for a number of years now. The game will die much slower if the sites decide to ban these countries.

There's a pretty good argument for just banning the 'pros' from these countries though, as there are plenty recs. It would suck for the people who play honestly but there won't be any game left in a few years if the pros from these countries continue to play online as things are.

The problem with this is that cheaters or even normal regs will still find a way to play. Do you think they will just give up and not try to use vpns or even move to a different country? So u pretty much only ban the recs...

I suggest the following changes:

1) Make the cards have sort of scrambled symbols, kind of like reCAPTCHA letters, just not as scrambled and a little easier to see/read for humans so that there can never be any confusion about what you're holding, since that would obviously lead to all kinds of problems. This would mess with the screen scrapers of the cheaters, and force them to manually input any hand that they want to cheat in into their program. This, and perhaps randomize where the flop is dealt on the tables, so that the scraper won't be able to grab the flop as easily. Idk how effective the last point would be, as I'm sure there's some clever workaround, but the first one in particular should make it harder for them. If we're afraid of chasing recreationals away, just make it so that new or losing accounts don't have the reCAPTCHA symbols, but you get it after X amount of time winning, or from the first hand if you're from a certain region where cheating is more prominent.

2) Make timebanks faster. This is controversial, and something that would hurt myself in particular, as I am somewhat of a serial tanker when it comes to big decisions. I do however think that it would be for the greater good, seeing as this in combination with 1) would ensure that the cheaters don't have the time to look up as many hands in real-time, and hopefully would dissuade them from doing it at all, since it would be too much hassle for not enough benefit.

3) If it is true that Bestpokercoaching advertised with real-time software all of the nicknames associated with the site should have their accounts frozen instantly and investigated. It goes without saying, but 2p2 should of course cease any advertising deals they have with them immediately as well.

It absolutely breaks my heart, but we've reached a time and age where real-time assistance is a thing. No warnings, no 2nd chances, instant permban and frozen assets that get distributed back to affected players is what I want to see. The sites need to be vigilant with this and fight back before the problem gets out of hand. Simply not talking about the elephant in the poker room doesn't alleviate the problem, it only makes the cheaters lives easier. I hope we can continue playing online poker for many years to come, and I think it's also possible, assuming the sites are proactive and go about this in the right way.

AIs are already much better solving simple CAPTCHAs than humans. Finding out a location of cards and recognizing slightly scrambled symbols would be a few hours of coding, using current computer vision and neural network libraries and tools

Would it help if sites forced you to shut down any programs running on your computer while playing except for a specific list? Or would there just be an easy workaround?

But there's also AI that is awesome at making other AI fail at those tasks!

they have this already i believe, but this isn't really an issue because it's already circumvented via a separate cpu filming the screen - ie why the future is live assist, 2 pcs right next to each other, one you play on and the other that tells you what to do

you can also do some things on your computer to make it look like only certain programs are running

the problem in arms races like this is that there's always a work around and while it may seem impossible to the casual person, the people building dream machines don't have much trouble adapting and exploiting