The two "banned" accounts (player 6 and 7) both crushed plo100 with 12-13bb/100 winrates. Both accounts stopped playing at the same time last year.

Looking at the stats for player 6 and 7, with the biggest difference being 3,7% and most postflop-stats within 1%, I am very sure those accounts are bots.

Thx for the input though :-)

So that's 1.7 million hands with an avg 7bb/100 - 7 runouts of this is not really going to be unlikely within the player pool, and neither is it unlikely that pros within the pool are going to notice these identities. I rarely see chat from anyone. The volume part is interesting but I can't see exactly for each. Should put AIEV adjusted and the span of time the hand volume was played in the table as will help see better if its not just paranoia.

There are alternatives like it is bonus whoring who moves around and/or uses friends identities , or collusion. Maybe just ask why the accounts were banned...

I am quite new to stars and have no idea who you are talking about. All this is concerning. I have 3 questions so far:

- I don't see how the quote above would be a clue pointing at those accounts being bots. Could you tell me the reasoning here?

- I think you could out the sns of the "99.5% sure banned bots" accounts. What do the mods think?

- Did you e-mail stars security about this? It wasnt clear if you emailed for the weird session where 1 account has been min-betting 100% or for the hole shenanigans you just presented us with. If you did, when did you? Did they answer anything other than "we will look into it"? If you didn't, why didn't you (seems like the first thing to do)?


Thank you for being aware and the time you took to inform us. I hope we can clear the accounts as fast as possible or find a way to determine that they are bots and go after them.

In it self it is of course not evidence of botting. Many regs dont play zoom. So the fact a reg isnt zooming is irrelevant. Its the fact that all of them dont play zoom, without exceptions. This point to a common MO

It is the same with the fact that the group of players dont move up despite crushing. In it self it is not suspicious if a player doenst move up despite doing well. Could be several reasons to that. However, it is weird that between 7 winners in PLO100 only one has dabbled in PLO200 - which he crushes, but he doesnt move up to PLO400.

Again, it points to a common M.O. indicating the group of players/bots are acting very similar

I am fine with that if the mods ok it.

Sorry for not being clear. I emailed stars security after that specific episode. I got the std answer that they havent seen any wrong doing and that they do everything they can to uphold game security bla bla bla.

I havent done more up untill know. Honestly I have told myself the whole time: "Cant be bots. They are too good, they dont have exactly the same stats and you are a paranoid idiot". Wasnt untill me and Grethe dug a little deeper that I really started thinking that something fishy is going on.

But man its weird. because there is no smoking gun. In other cases people have found some VERY convincing evidence. But I have to admit, me and Grethe have none of that. Just a bunch of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence...

Honestly, I dont know if they are bots or not. I dont know if they share hole cards or not. But I do know, that I would like Stars to look into it if there is a general agreement that this looks fishy

Just wondering but how would you quantify the edge that hole card sharing would have for bots? Would it be a tonne? Even then I still think humans have a much better time than bots. Obviously it will affect the AIEV but good players are reading the dead cards anyway and so this effect occurs from skill also.

ok but if you know someone else had 4 flush cards and you're drawing to a flush that can really change your equity.

@ MFN

I couldnt tell you how much knowing hole cards mean, but I would imagine its significant in particular regarding flop decisions. The poster freewilly12 posted a bunch of threads last year where he suspected similar stuff. Ie a bot and/or collusion ring. He showed plenty of graphs where the assumed culprits ran insanely hot in spots, where the money went in on the flop.



BTW. here are some hands from the weird session where one of the guys minbet/minraised 100%. I think you can spot who it is

It still doesn't indicate bots, only collusion, as humans will use this info better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle

taking stats of 7 players, the chance of two winning players stats being similar is not so bad. I don't know what it is ,


This part is super lol tbh, like the bot was bugged into always raising for about 150 hands or something?

this makes me very very sad. i dont have any input on the matter as i dont play these games, but if charlybumbum and grethe suspect something fishy is happening it probably is

Knowing 4 more cards on every hand would be a tremendous help. Your NSD would skyrocket as well as running over aiev. There is no beating a guy that knows 4 more cards than you. This is nothing like a guy thinking about card removal while in hand. If the bot is well made it could also take card removal into account (on top of the cards it knows through colluding)

Charlie: in those hands you have when 2 suspected accounts were at same table, how do they NSD compare to when they are not on the same table?

I actually find it awesome if someone has solved the game so much they can create bots... Kudos to them, bring them on. But collusion is ****ing despicable. I trust stars has pretty good security on these issues though.

I cant filter for that in PT4 .

According to russian PTR their NSD winnings are either around break even or positive for all the players.

Again, not a smoking gun (very far from it). Plenty of players have positive NSD winnings. But further evidence that fits well with the overall story line

I can imagine 1 dude from Kazakhstan crushing plo100, but 2? No way in hell!

charlybum, i don't see anything wrong w this players. just looks 7 good players .

Much of these topics were discussed last time as people were trolling freewilly's posts. Thanks for oink and Grethe for bringing this up. I also agree this seems fishy.

Just wanted to add my 2c: It's not necessarily that bots are playing 100% GTO poker, it's their consistency that beats humans. They don't make major errors possibly ever whereas the difference between a slightly losing player and a winner might be his inconsistency and that his game ranges too much from A-game to C-game.

Easy with HM. I can do it if you want. Pm.

Go2go right now but will check tomorow

Hah, take a look at player 6 and 7 then


This is a very good point.


Also, I'll urge people to look at some of the similarities in the data listed.
I think the postflop stats are very suspicious

^^

The 2 accounts from Kazahkstan that we suspect were banned, have very very suspicious stats. I dont think anyone in his right mind can take a look at those stats and not worry about botting.

Throughout the years I have played with exactly 2 regs from Kazahkstan. Those 2. They both crushed and they played with almost exactly the same frequencies postflop

Btw. None of these guys plays any tournaments or SNGs, they have played a handfull of freerools - prolly the all in shoot outs. They grind hunreds of thousands of hands, but never play a single tournament or SnG... Again, not a smoking gun, not close. Its just weird behaviour

Poker Player Snapshot – “tmckendry” -I get to be my own boss, play a game, and make doctor-like money

I think you guys are onto something here. It is extremely unlikely that four players residing the same country playing in the same games will have almost identical stats (difference of each <3%) when comparing 25 different indexes. I am pretty sure if you dig even deeper you are going to find more stats with the same similarities. IMO stars should be informed about this so they can take a closer look with their more sophisticated security tools.

^

Exactly my point of view. Some of the stats, especially the postflop stats, are so similar in patterns, that it just cant be explained by "a special style" or "learned from a certain person". Even some of the best players in HS-games today have stats less identical than these guys. I mean, whats the chance of 4-7 players all stealing SB within a 3% interval AND at the same time having the exact same betting/calling pattern postflop.

Then add the location, no history, no zoom, the AIEV rungood, no one moving up or playing tours/sngs/whatever and the weird episode with min-raising everyhand while playing normal at the other tables.

Something just doesn't add up imo.

Jeah, agree. Please send the info to pokerstars and also link this thread.

you guys should make a topic for this, dont think bbv is the place for such a serious issue

Definitely seems shady.

i don´t know these players, but happy that respected posters like oink and grethe brought it up, def adds to a more valuable discussion on a very serious topic.

fwiw, with all the cheating going on everywhere, school, university, sports, politics, it would be foolish to assume that a business like online poker is completely safe due to a somehow unhackable software. most of us were prob cheated in some point of their careers without knowing it.