SS PLO and other check/raise enthusiasts - please help us!

Some of you might remember a post from Oink and I almost 2 months ago (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ostcount=35671)

Here are the cliffs of the process:

1) Oink and I suspected a bot-ring might have been running on Pokerstars. Mainly in the PLO100 games.

2) We shared our data/evidence with 2+2 in the BBV-thread and got confirmation (and added another account from plo50)

3) We contacted Pokerstars back in February with our data and arguments

4) The “bots” are gone (except one, who’s not a bot), but we haven’t received any money back or heard anything from Pokerstars besides standard mails like “we are looking into the subject”.

5) We have decided to make the names of the suspected accounts public. This will hopefully draw some attention to the case and give us, among many others, some of our money back.

The suspected accounts are:
.t.o.t.a.l.s.u.c.c.e.s.s (Russia)
.t.o.p.d.o.g.6.6.9 (Russia)
.t.h.o.u.g.h.t.s.a.w.a.y (Russia)
.R.i.c.h.a.r.d.L.i.o.n.H (Russia)
.s.m.e.l.l.u.r.b.u.x (Russia)
.R.a.z.d.a.v.a.y.7 (Kazakhstan)
.P.h.a.n.t.o.r.i.n (Kazakhstan)

So people, please check your databases and help us getting money back!


Here's the c/p of the original post Oink made:

If you have played in the stars PLO100 games you will know me as Charlybumbum. I have been a full time pro for 7.5 years making my living from midstakes LHE up untill 2010, midstakes PLO on Party/Eurobet up untill 2012 and Pokerstars PLO100-PLO200 since. The last couple of years mainly PLO100.

Grethe is also playing in those games, altho not as much as he is busy making money in the real world.

I log about 70-80k hands on average pr month, so there are few regs in the PLO100 games I dont notice and remember. I rarely if ever suspect wrong doing, however there have been a group of players from some eastern european countries the last 18 months or so, that has really triggered my curiosity. They all play very similarly, they all do the same type of things.

They have the same tendencies (Ie 4bet wide oop with a range of hands you dont typically see regs 4bet at these stakes, squeeze very wide in the BB compared to the pool of regs, they are all more showdown bound than typical regs and they have the exact same tendencies on the river.)

It is hard to explain more adequately, except that you are gonna have to trust me, when I say they are different compared to more standard "2p2 and RIO regs" - and what they do differently is the same across the board.

The thing is tho, that the players in question do not have completely similar stats. I have also experienced how they have adjusted to certain things, when I have adjusted to certain of their tendencies. This is imo evidence of human behaviour and not botting.

So if these are indeed bots, the bot owner(s) are clever enough to have them not play identically and to adjust when some opponents try and exploit them. Yes they are exploitable in some facets, but overall they are by far the best players in the PLO100 pool

So to some stats and various evidence of more or less circumstantial and anecdotal nature:

These are stats from russian PTR


In total we suspect 7 players

- 2 from Kazahkstan who we havent seen on pokerstars since July 2014. These are players 6 and 7 in the excel sheet. We could out them as neither PTR or russian PTR have tracked them since July 2014 and we are 99.9% sure they are banned from Stars.

Id like to point your attention to the crazy similarity in a lot of their stats. As I said above I am personally very sure that these guys where indeed bots and are now banned. But Pokerstars will never confirm or deny that pr their policy.

- 4 russian guys. These are players 1-3 and player 5 in the excel sheet. We have highlighted player 5's stats in italics as the sample is smaller and he is somewhat different than the rest stat wise. But style wise he is very very similar

- 1 from a particular eastern european country that we wont name, as it would be very obvious who he is. If you have a good guess, plz dont out him, it would be very unreasonable if he is indeed not a bot!

This is player 4 in the excel sheet. This guy is diverging somewhat from players 1-3 and player 5 in some matters. More on that later.

We dont know how hard evidence these stats are. As you can see they diverge a few percentage points in most key stats. However in other stats they are very similar (RFI SB and CR TURN as examples).

Feel free to give your honest opnion based on these stats. Smoking gun and damning evidence, or just 5 guys learning PLO from the same source?

I am gonna post a few further facts that is definetely circumstantial at best. I am well aware that these facts dont mean that these guys are bots. But it all adds up imho.

- All 7 players are new. None of them have been tracked on Stars prior to PTRs "hiatus" from Pokerstars

- I can not recall ever seing any of them chat. Most regs dont chat regularly, but will occasionally say something. These guys are silent as the grave

- I can not recall ever seing more than 2 of them at the same table at once

- I can not recall ever experiencing them on tilt

- According to russian PTR they never play zoom. 7 guys logging tons of hands, but never ever playing zoom...?

- According to PTR and russian PTR they never play above PLO400 and only one of them (player 4) has played PLO200. 7 guys crushing but not moving up...?

- Assuming the 2 kazahk players were bots, do note the similarities between player 1-5 and those two.

- Possible collusion: Completely circumstantial but I have 80k hands in total in my db with players 1-5. Over this sample they run a massive 100BI over AIEV and it is not because one of them is running hot. One player is at AIEV, the rest are massively above AIEV.

Furthermore, I have 30k hands with player 6-7, they ran 30 BI above AIEV.

I strongly suspect holecard sharing when they are at the same tables!!

- One funny but super weird story that imho is very very suspicous: Sometime last year, I want to say 4-6 months ago, I play a session in the afternoon. One of the guys (player 3) sits at 3 or 4 of my tables. The weird thing is that at 1 table he proceeds to minbet or minraise 100%. Literally 100%, both pre post (eg cbetting 1 bb into 65bb pots). It is only when faced with an all in, where he would call. He does this for about 25 minutes and then leaves. However at the other tables he plays his usual style.

I actually reported this to stars, but I get the std answer. "no wrong doing bla bla"

I think thats it. I have to say to me it looks bad and Grethe agrees with me. But if you guys think we are paranoid idiots who need to get out our tinfoil hats, let us know

Id like to add for clarification, that alle the suspected players/bots have been gone since before we emailed Stars.

So as much as we would like to take credit for the banning of these bastards, we can not do that

Other than that, I agree completely with Grethe. If you guys have lost significant amounts of money to these players, get of your ass and email stars.

Lets go Stevie on Stars ass

Sick.
Can you share their stats? How much they have for bb/100?

How are you assuming they are bots? Just because you suspect they are colluding?

Stats and winrates can be found in my original post in the BBV thread. By they were typically ad around 7-8bb/100.

popcorn ready. some of those players just never adjusted at all so that makes a lot of sense that they were bots. wish i had more hands to contribute but sadly my database on this computer that i use now is recent/doesn't include many if any hands with them

Can we actually have a thread like this focus on them either being bots or hole card sharing players? Because the combination of the two is unfathomable; to program bots that share holecards efficiently enough that it massively impacts AIEV.

Wow! winrates of about 7 BB/100 at PLO100 with bots? Really would like to get the algorithm of these bot(s) and play it the same as a human being.

In some way i am really impressed by this even if it makes me angry.

According to russptr they all crush and even have similar nsd (slightly winning or be) and sd lines.
Def sucks, but must give props to the guy who ran/runs them, it's probably harder to create a bot like this than to actually win at higher levels.

I play micro stacks so cant help u, but its very nice work of u 2 to do what u do.

Gl and hope all to go well.

Q('_')... here. I sent an email to Stars asking for data of my play against all accounts (lost all of my hands expect last 160k) and when these accounts were last seen. I don't think they will give out the data though. Also put a link to this thread.

Kind of related: I thought about holecard sharing and I think a first step would be to disable "show folded cards" for PLO, makes sharing a lot tougher because you have to either share while you're in the hand or remember the cards once folded. A simple "what did you fold there?" will not be possible anymore, but of course it can't prevent systematic and possibly automated sharing.

Any merit in posting this somewhere else than SS PLO?

Any merit of posting it at all? Seems like it's a no win situation now.

I am interesting in one thing, without reading through again.

how many hands did they play together? I am bothered only about collusive play when there is money/time at stake. Playing bots is just like playing the bot designer, it's no different to someone having staked a stable. It generates action and rake so it's not so bad, unless there is collusion.

Recognize playing with at least 2 of these guys for a solid amount. Will look into my database.

E: Had hands against all of them, a couple just a hundred or few. The others 1k to 6k. Only lost against one, though. If my vs player filter for the graph is an accurate way to test this.

The biggest chance to get some money back is to create some attention on this problem.

We are not sure how many hands the accounts played together. It is not possible to setup the right filter criteria in HEM2 and I haven't got time to do the programming myself.

As for the last part, that's just a ******ed statement. There's no arguments for putting staking stables equal to bots. Please don't derail this thread with s*** like that.

I have nearly 50k hands against these accounts since January last year. I followed the previous thread and was surprised to see a couple of those that are included here. Some seemed to be better than others. Though when I looked through my database I found that I had notes on 3 of them saying that they slowrolled me, which is very strange.

Either way, They all made very unconventional plays and were definitely not good in any sense. They're the players I have the most extensive notes on.

I use PT4 and I'm a noob so if anyone can let me know how to find the 'vs player' filter, that would be great.

I also didn't conisder any of them particularly good while not terrible either. Seeing them log 7bb/100 over 6figure samples just shows how much tilt and other human vulnerabilities impact winrate.

Meh, apparently stars are allowing decision based software or something according to a thread on NVG recently, and I don't give a **** in plo although in hyper turbo spots or limit games it can be a bit more difficult. Collusion is absolutely unethical however.

Anyone who lost to a bot in plo >50bb deserves to lose their money (outside of collusive play). It is not actually ******ed depending on your philosophical view points relating to poker ethics (and identity) - if you are allowed to voice certain opinion (you feel victimized) then I am allowed to voice mine (victims suck, bring on the russians bots). Anyway unless you get better data you can't really prove anything,,, as I said before there is decent chance that winning player would have similar stats and oh wow you found 7 winning samples with some similar looking stats in a 0000's+ big player pool, but over large samples I still think that stats will center on similar averages, (eg. VPIP ranges from 28-34, that's pretty big differnece if they was indeed bots over those samples and pretty standard. )particularly if they are multi accounts or are friends who share strategy. I'm pretty sure stars have their own collusion detecting processes in place.

Been voicing my concern over this, too. Definitely a point Mt.FishNoob should consider when forming an opinion about botting. But don't want to derail this thread either, peace.

I heard/read somewhere (not sure if it was official or not) that on average bots live on pokerstars for about 8 hours. It is concerning and sad to find out that many have lived for much, much longer.

Sorry but am I a moron for not being convinced they are 100% bots? I would deffo bet 1:1 on them not being bots (only giving such good odds because 2 experienced regs have had a chat and concluded they agree with each other) before win rate is revealed, and afterwards i would probably lay 2:1 considering they are winning over decent sample.

It could just be decision aiding software, which is neigh on impossible to enforce bar pokerstars spying on system processes which are running, which people probably would have a huge problem against and even then they can just run it on another pc somehow.

People who tilt (or allow tilt into their cognitive decision making system) deserve to lose. I am 100% right like 99% of the time. Bring on the bots, bring on the decision software. Lol at people wanting money back.

(unless collusive play, that makes me very angry)

Haha I got wrecked by all except one of them. Fingers crossed I get paid out. =)

Could you guys plz not feed the troll?

His opinion on this matter is irrelevant. I would love it, if we could have 1 serious thread that wasnt wrecked by his druginduced incoherent ramblings.

Plz plz plz just ignore him. Tyvm

Sorry, but bots in general are unethical and would destroy poker entirely. I think we all know how much of an impact software like HEM and PPT had on online poker. Everyone who is not a complete donk uses stats and databases for decision making and we all know (i think you can`t disagree with that) that playing without a trackersoftware is a huge disadvantage at the tables.

But although we have all these stats available in our HUDS we have to do some work manually. We have to chose at which stats we look in different situations and based on that we call, check, bet, raise, reraise, fold or whatever. Finally all is about mathematics and also about concentration, focus and state of mind.

A well programmed bot has some very big advantages and takes is to the next level compared to human beings: A bot is always focused, a pot can "look" at a lot of different stats within a second and calculate which is mathematically the best decision in a particular spot. A bot is not effected by a bad beat or a NHL-playoff-game ruuning on TV.

And by the way: we are all trying to be like bots and trying to "calculate" the best decision. Or why are we using stats and running OddsOracle day in and day out? Or do you make decisions based on your "feelings"?

Playing against a bot is like trying to compete with calculator in a math-contest. You are sitting there with pen and paper and you have to solve 3x18x28x17x1128 = ?. I give you 1:10000000000000000000 odds if you can be as good as a bot when i comes to a 30 second timelimit per calculation and 500 calculations per hour.

But maybe you are a Poker-Super-Savant and you can do it. Or you are a bot yourself and also able to post here in this forum. Who knows...

Grethe/Oink - I'm a little confused what you actually want from us? I have 700-1,300 hands with each and losing to all except for lionh.

Punk PokerStars for a refund.