blonde poker forum

Don't think there are any cliffs as yet. suspected up to 25 accounts so far found mainly 200PLO estimated profits $1.4mill according to whoTfru.

Some of the accounts still active as of 9/6/15 and no word from a stars rep so far

links from 2p2:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/153/high-stakes-pl-omaha/massive-bot-ring-pokerstars-how-spot-them-1537778/

Dumbed down NVG link:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip-brought-you-online-poker-report/news-massive-plo-bot-ring-pokerstars-millions-hands-huge-winners-1538509/

fkn Russains ruin it for everyone.

Only way to win nowadays is to cheat it seems...

I found the thread interesting and the $ values won with these bots amazing. Multiple people in the 2+2 thread saying this kills online poker in 10 years, I'ld say closer to 10 months unless the issue is addressed.

Why aren't the security and game integrity departments of at least stars good enough to catch these before the players do? They played millions of hands!

I've played against most of the names and they are 100bb'ing and to my recollection they are pretty good. I didn't think a bot would be that sophisticated.

It's more worrying that on other sites they will do very little.

They have human controllers at least some times. It's really really scary though. Tournaments might be the only safe place left online. Stars have the best support and method/means and couldn't stop this. I dread to think about the other sites

The figure taken from legit players is likely to be in the region of $4million, when you consider they have contributed approx $2.5mill in rake. I wonder if stars plans on redistributing that?

It seems these bots were highly sophisticated in some sort of hole card sharing, which is a bigger deal in PLO than NLHE for card removal. Which goes a long way to explaining why regs thought they were awful but they crushed harder than anyone.

Naturally this lead the bots to run massively above AIEV, as they took -EV lines with perhaps knowing which cards were dead etc etc.

I'd imagine more information to come to light over the coming days.

I don't know why these stories still surprise people.

There have been very smart people working on poker AI for a long time, and i'd be surprised if there were any sites where their presence wasn't rife. There are some pretty crappy bits of commercial software available (e.g this one (http://www.bonusbots.com/holdempokerbot.htm)) that allow anyone to get involved and potentially enhance the decision making of the default profiles provided. However the really dangerous guys are those that quietly work in private and, even more powerfully, add real-time collusion to the mix. It's just inevitable that it's going on with the financial upside.

Part of the problem is that for the sites/networks that aren't at the top of the tree, these guys probably contribute a big chunk of their ongoing revenue! It's true you'd hope Stars would have more of a long-term outlook on the downside, but they're still up against a bunch of very smart computer scientists, and it's like other cyber security areas where you're often fighting a losing battle against highly sophisticated "attackers".

Jamier-Host nails it.

Only a matter of time before a player is ejected from a live major tournament for running hands through an engine, either on his 'phone or being fed the info through a device. It's inevitable.

I'd start getting suspicious if this guy sits down to play with you.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Metal_Mickey.jpg)

Where were you when I needed you, Andrew?

Ugh, scary shit :(

Lets legalise bots.

Give them their own room where players can pit their wits against bots, or bot makers can pit their bots against other bots.

Bring it out in the open imo.

these bots pay the same rake to the room that you or i pay? the room does not distinguish?

so up and until now its fair to say the incentive for the room to do much about this has been mixed at best?

If they were break even or slight winners/losers pre rakeback, this would be perfect for the site. As it turns out they are the absolute crushers of these stakes, the fact they have raked 2.5mill and lets assume they have cashed out all 1.4mill its still a net win for stars.

I only play NLHE but got a refund for $60 last week and I have no idea who or how long the banned account had been around. I'd be surprised if a more proportional refund wasn't closer to $600. You would hope been regulated, there more clarity on jurisdiction and protection of the players, but i guess time will tell.

Well they win at a higher rate than the average regular so take money out of the system quicker, stop it being passed about and raked. They will also cause potentially billions more in damages to the actual site, so as shitty as I think this is, I don't think Stars allowed it at all, they were too lazy and complacent. They forgot to take into account that certain players are more likely to be able to spot a bot than average, so when regulars previously emailed them, they were given the stock loony toon response, instead of being taken into account and an investigation taken place. Admittedly, one of the SNE who claims have emailed several of the previously banned, and current alleged accounts named a bunch of random people as botters since he heard the news, but his previous email could have easily have stopped this months ago. They missed several more obvious detection methods, like how has this new player emerged and played 8 hours a day 6 days a week for the past 3 months at a winrate that is exceptional.


Many people are also angry because Stars recently countered arguments that the rake was too high by showing regulars who had very solid winrates, showing it was still possible. Pretty devastating stuff and it just shows you how good someone has to be to have moved up from Stars low to midstakes, or even beat poker on any site nowadays. There is almost proof that bots have been on every single site on the internet now at this point, beating all sorts of games too while they are at it. People thought PLO was safe, and would be for years. It isn't.

Rigged.
Always has been.

Bite my shiny metal bot ring.


(http://img1.goodfon.su/original/1920x1200/f/ab/futurama-futurama-bender-5993.jpg)

This is very crazy revealing stuff! I've only read 20pages so far, but holy shit the fact the biggest winners at plo 100 and 200 and 400 on stars a lre a group of "bots" that play like they're on an 09 isildur heater is scary AF! I feel like HS guys are involved with this who have solved this level cus no bots are ever taking shots at the next stake

Reading this, I really don't see how any player can have complete confidence that online poker is a fair playing field. This must be rife across the major poker sites, and apparently difficult to prevent. The potential for 2/> 'bots' playing at the same table and perfecting a card-sharing strategy is also pretty scary.

I'm sure that this guy was sat to my left last night.

Just a shame and so bizzare that it ends up being players that find this instead of stars security. PLO regs at this level owe so much to this. The fact they these 'bots' are not playing gto and have human interaction and spew makes it so much harder to discover. its IMO the reason why live >online and we all shouldn't play anything but MTTs online, samantha82 or w/e the name is is the most surprising. One Russian reg has met Samantha and said they are real and they have $200k mtt winning recorded, but follow the same stats as all other 'bot' Russians plo regs that are already banned.

One point that Stars are going to have to face up to.  There services aren't legal in Russia.  Cheating at gambling is a crime in the UK.  Sooner or later the UKGC are going to be asked why they are exposing UK customers to cheating from a part of the world where the offenders can't be punished.

This sort of stuff has been going on for a decade online.  Whether it is bots or collusion.   Add into the fact in 2015 all the 'real' punters virtually play perfectly anyway even if they are not colluding and/or a bot then i don't get why anyone plays online at all anymore for serious cash unless they enjoy setting fire to money.

Wrote on this before and got the majority pooh poohing it - though i dont believe poker sites are rigged per say - the fact is where there is easy money to be earnt you will always get people who will try and take advantage of the system to the determent of honest players.

Why people get surprised is beyond me as it happens everyday in all walks of life- there will always be people that want to make a buck the illicit way.

No need to be too dramatic. Online is most definitely still beatable at almost all stakes if you're good enough.

The "Real Punters" can't be playing that perfect if someone can come along and program a bot that completely destroys them

 Didn't take to much notice of this fact when I read it on that thread, but it is quite significant isn't it? Surely that in itself indicates that people are pressing the buttons but the decisions are being made by something else? Maybe the rest of the crew have never played poker but just employed to press the right buttons.

How is this different to the programme that the guy in HUSNG's s running which him and  2 others are using to run over everyone? (See tighy's new thread)

PokerStars and poker players react to a suspected PLO bot ring that won an estimated $1.5 million. http://ow.ly/OwdXY

Lol this is absolutely nothing like the sites rigging hands. You can't even claim so yourself, so don't try and get that one through. And if you don't mean or think that it seems largely counterproductive to keep brining up that is what you actually believe over and over.


The pokernews article above is just weird. Loads of random questions asked to random guys. Not sure why plplaya thinks Russian ptr should be banned when it was one of the more useful tools for catching the bots and its not like the playerpool is so big at midstakes that you regularly see new accounts. It's just the same old faces everywhere. It's scary that stars think players are going to be thrilled that they catch 95% of bots. It doesn't really seem that high when a decent chunk are just going to 've straight up ridiculous and anyone could catch them. Think of all the crackpots who try these crazy schemes.


Oxford Chicago Joey did an interview with sauce where they discuss the bots and a wide range of other things. Basically stars security has an incentive to not catch bots that have avoided their security tools as it makes them look incompetent. Also they have a methodology for finding these bots and don't want to look outside of this to see what else they can find.


Omm from what I have read about the skier 5 program is that it kind of skirts the rules on software by not calculating anything in game, but rather it has thousands of static charts that it refers to. This is why a Nash calculator like Holdem resource calculator is not allowed, as it works this out at the time.
It seems very sketchy to me, and I have to question why stars thought this was a good line to draw. It seems way too powerful.


Arbboy you must 've trolling. The real punters play perfectly. So many regulars play badly and make nonsensical decisions. There are plenty of fish out there still who pot when they have it and half pot when they don't. Virtually every table on stars will have an extremely bad player on it. Tournaments even more so.

bots on ipoker too, iv been told the SN's of suspected bots but been specifically asked not to reveal publically, anyone who plays ipoker feel free to skype/pm me i'll tell you

Iv also learnt of some big scale cheating that went on in big live games Iv payed in, so I'm feeling pretty bloody depressed abotu gambling right now...

basically I've had a house stolen from me (I live in leeds remember, so a pretty big house). cool story bro dry your eyes etc

I have been incredibly naive in my career and have paid a big price, this is what happens to inexperience and naivety in this world...lessons not learnt in blood are seldom remembered

Sorry to hear that Dave.

Are you able to give any insight into the live cheating, as in what they were doing? I presume collusion of some form?

Sorry to be all mysterious but cant go into detail, not collusion no, one of the most sophisticated cheating systems I ever heard, involving marked cards, thier advantage is so huge it would have been close to impossible for them to lose in a single session, was in a casino game too, and for big money.

Vegas? UK? elsewhere?

Elsewhere

Wow, this really doesnt sound to good at all, sorry to hear that you were a victim, is it 100%for certain that this happened to you?

Suppose there will always be criminals in all walks of life and poker will be no different, you would expect you would be somewhat safe in a casino though. Sometimes you half expect the person sitting next to you could be a criminal but i would never have expected that the criminal activities would involve the game i was playing in (if you get what i mean. Lots of criminals in there).

yes 100%, heard it from the horse's mouth...so to speak :(
$200 i lost in these games

My advice is that you should never assume anything safe, the safer and cleaner something appears then (whilst yes it's much harder to cheat) there is huge upside incentive for the perpetrators because of the sense of security the victims have, "We're in X casino so it's 100% safe" and so on. Where there is a will there is a way and some very sharp and clever people with plenty of money behind these things...

If something feels wrong, look closer, or ask someone, dont be afraid of coming across like a bad loser if it doesn't seem right do something, just be vigilant.

Don't be scared though, the vast majority of gambling games are straight and don't let paranoia ruin your enjoyment of the game, just need to remember protecting your money goes further than just not going broke with a bad top pair, you're protecting your money from anyone who wants to take it, fair means or foul...

Yeah cool stuff thanks for that, didn't watch the full 3hrs lol I was dreading to try finding the topic but it was at the start :p

3 hours of Sauce bopping along on his treadmill should be every players dream.

Seems like the worst spyware ever. I mean its 2015 and they are using screenshots!? Its not really feasible for poker although I guess if you got really unlucky you could get stung.

you think the press release might have said screenshot to keep it simple for the millions out there without much knowledge of all thins technical but know about screenshots from there phones