Brag: think i won with my 80

Received this mail today. No money received yet....

Hello Grethe,

Greetings from PokerStars.

At the outset, I would like to apologise for the length of time it has taken for us to get back to you on this matter. Please understand that this was a particularly complex investigation. We are unable to comment on an investigation that is ongoing, and we wanted to take the time to ensure that we reached the correct resolution.

Prior to your original email to us reporting this matter, we had already been investigating the accounts in question. We are now able to confirm that we have closed a number of these accounts which were found to be violating our Terms of Service. If you were deemed to have been harmed by unfair play as a result of these violations, you should have received a compensatory credit by now, as well as an email notifying you of the credit.

Thank you once again for taking the time to write to us with your concerns. We want a clean game just as much as you do - both PokerStars and you directly benefit from honest and fair games, and we want to work constructively with you (and anyone else, for that matter) to ensure that our games are fair.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know. Best of luck at the tables!

Regards,

Ian Y
PokerStars Game Integrity Team

I got this exact same e-mail today.
I reported 3 accounts (two of them same as Grethe and Oink ) to Stars in November - 6 months ago - after I switched back to Stars from bot infested iPoker games.
(Got so ridiculed on iPoker bot-thread I didn't want to mention anything here...)
On my database Stars bots don't have any EV-disparity - infact they are running below.

@ Loctus are you a beliver now???

Wow, this looks horrible for the future of online poker. I'm deeply dismayed that winning bots are already infiltrating PLO ring games and evading stars detection for a combined million+ hands. What is their all in adjusted bb/100 and how many shared hands do they have?

Willy yeah I will obviously believe there are bots capable of beating SSPLO now, since there evidently is. If my position previously was that there were bots not doing this I was quite obviously wrong.

I will maintain that they are not programmed to share holecards, though

Well I'll be damned.



How they manage to confiscate funds if they left the site? Or is this some courtesy thing?

I suspected some russian bots very briefly last year , but I honestly thought they was Stars bots because they ran so hot.

Anyway I guess it paid off, much to my shock. So gj i suppose , and glad to hear those accounts were already under investigation.

They said 'a number of these accounts' ??

What were the exact violations? Still doesn't confirm bottery.

To my understanding they refund only the money they are able to freeze.

Sometimes they have gone to their own pockets - Chinese DoN cheating ring.


Hello xxxxxx,

Greetings from PokerStars.

At the outset, I would like to apologise for the length of time it has taken for us to get back to you on this matter. Please understand that this was a particularly complex investigation. We are unable to comment on an investigation that is ongoing, and we wanted to take the time to ensure that we reached the correct resolution.

We are now able to confirm that we have closed a number of these accounts which were found to be violating our Terms of Service. If you were deemed to have been harmed by unfair play as a result of these violations, you should have received a compensatory credit by now, as well as an email notifying you of the credit.

Thank you once again for taking the time to write to us with your concerns. We want a clean game just as much as you do - both PokerStars and you directly benefit from honest and fair games, and we want to work constructively with you (and anyone else, for that matter) to ensure that our games are fair.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know. Best of luck at the tables!

Regards,

Ian Y
PokerStars Game Integrity Team


> __________________________________________________ _____
> From: support@pokerstars.com
> Sent: 11/28/14 00:15:52
> To: xxxxxx@gmail.com
> Subject: PokerStars Game Integrity - Bot Report


Check out the subject field on the e-mail (bolded above).
Unless you think Stars integrity made false positive...

(> __________________________________________________ _____
> From: xxx xxx <xxxxx@gmail.com>
> Sent: 11/27/14 08:39:52
> To: PokerStars Support <support@pokerstars.com>
> Subject: Re: PokerStars Game Integrity - Bots

Above subject field when I reported the bots half year ago.

Pokerstars pm me if you need to strenghten your game integrity team..

This is the first reply I got from the Stars integrity team back then.
Is he an art major or something?? Nice metaphor nevertheless..


Hello xxxxx,

Thank you for contacting PokerStars. Your email was escalated to me as a member of the Game Integrity Team.

It would actually be quite difficult for players to identify bots at the tables. To draw an analogy, it would be difficult to distinguish whether a sculpture was made by a human or robot simply by looking at the final sculpture itself. The important information in this example would be to look at what tools were used, how long it took to make the sculpture, and so on. In the bot detection world, this relates to how the account interacts with the PokerStars client, how they input their bets and raises, and so on. Consequently, many of the key identifiers of bot use are largely indistinguishable to end-users such as yourself.

Nevertheless, given that your particular case appears to be a strongly founded investigation, we welcome you to email us with their User IDs, along with the reasons for your suspicion, and we will investigate accordingly.

I look forward to hear from you.

Regards,

xxxxx.
Game Integrity Team


> __________________________________________________ _____
> From: support@pokerstars.com
> Sent: 10/22/14 10:14:49
> To: xxxx@gmail.com
> Subject: PokerStars Support - Automated Players (Bots)

Had total of 1k hands with 3 of them, 24$ refund.

meh, you reported 'bot' yes? Still doesn't confirm bots. Could just be decision software which doesn't play itself whilst your grinding your 9-5. Amonsgt many other possibilities already stated.

Stars probably can't even know either way anyway.

I dont care if they are bots or just cheaters who shared holecards. They are gone! Thats the good news.

I study Automation and system-tech in university. And I have to say that bots come across my mind all the time. And TBH a bot like this wouldnt require all that much. PF edge is extremely easy to create, its just simple math. flop algorithms based on expected equity and fold equity are not that hard, turn same thing with the flop but begins to go on the gray area But river totally gray. gray area calculations can be simplified tho with simple rules like check if value assumption <1; or board texture * aggression/street = calling elasticity stuff..

Bots are by no means perfect but they have a huge edge PF and can make hard calling decisions easy OTR.
Also Cbets and random double barrelling gets kind of close to perfection.

I assume you have also heard of GTO,
think of how easy it is for a machine to determine perfect unexploitable betting ranges.
GTO moneys are coming from villains mistakes -> a bot doesnt even have to have a specific exploiting/exploitable strategy, it can rely on basic math.

the best way to beat a bot is play alot differently than what your hud says you play. by no means are bots unbeatable. they just have fun GTO in position plays.

The subject of Stars last e-mail was "Bot report" and they said players in question in fact violated their ToS.

Of course it could be whatever ToS violation. You make your own mind what it likely and what not.

I got $62.63

I don't think it's from playing these specific suspected bots/colluders though.

I got liky 17 bucks, and I've played a total of over 10k hands vs these guys, so I as well doubt this is the reason.

you guys wrote an email to stars support to claim funds?

Didn't email them

They give refunds from the funds they are able to seize and then they calculate what was your exposure to the violators. For obvious reasons botters keep the bare minium in their accounts.

My view is they caught more accounts than was reported and that is why players who never logged hands on plo 50 and 100 got refunds too.

Would be interesting to know for example which high volume zoom accounts stopped playing last few months.

I played 80k hands vs them and got 1xx. Stars has more or less acknowledged that these players have been banned. I have no idea why GGARJ got a refund, must be a different matter

And mind you, even if they confiscated 40k or 60k, there is hundreds if not thousands of players that has to be compensated. Furthermore, there are prolly some recs out there that lost way more to them than us regs

I still haven't received any money. Fwiw I'm stuck 1xxx$ in total against the scums

Any change you have played against the two Kazakh accounts on plo200, GGARJ?

Stuck 4 figures against them, and stars return 0. Plus you did all the hard work with highlighting issue. sic.

If it would be okay, I would like to make a couple suggestions.

1. those of you who were returned funds - should also check how much your down against these players (or similar stats) using the same method as Grethe. If you dont have HHs, request them from Stars. If everyone does this you can easily work out a few very very important metrics that stars obv won't share with the players for obvious reasons.

2. Zoom players need to unite and create an "integrity cartel" somewhat like the husng mafia but with more moral fibre. Literally for every single plo zoom pool. With a ssplo cartel boss for each stake monitoring the integrity of the games. Reviewing flagged suspects. Only the players can catch these villains, thread proves that. How often is it we now here about funds being returned from stars? Hardly ever. even though zoom + plo = the best possible environment for this type of co-orindated dark play. Greth & Oink probably spent a lot of time investigating this. And they're doing a better job then the people who are being paid to do it.

3. This more then likely goes both up+down from plo100. The pools are much bigger the lower the stake, which in turn would make sense for there to be more bots the bigger the pools.

I'm not going to do anything to initiate or execute the above suggestions (because i dont play at stars and have too much on my plate as it is), however, if others are prepared to get involved and I will come to the party to help clean up house with any spare time that i do have.

Regards, Tops

I did play some PLO200 in the last quarter of 2014 for SNE VPPs, but can't find the kazakh accounts in my DB

None of these accounts ever played above PLO100