Huge organised Chinese cheating ring on PokerStars.

[Dale]

It's recently come to light that a team of at least 49 Chinese players were involved in collusion in PokerStars Double or Nothing SNG.

I estimate the total amount stolen to be around $750,000!

I've written a fairly long article on my blog about what went on: http://daleroxxu.blogspot.com/2010/05/49-player-chinese-cheating-scandal-on.html

But if you have a spare half-day why not wade through this 500 post thread on 2p2: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/chinese-don-collusion-ring-stars-791760/

[thetank]

"Questions are being raised about how PokerStars are policing their games. It certainly seems to be more of a retroactive than a proactive approach."

True, I would have thought anti-collusion software would catch this kind of stuff a little faster.

Surprised that it took so long for the regs to pick up on it too. Lot of very clever guys with above average pattern recognition intelligence, how come it took so long for the pieces to come together?

[Dale]

From most of the HHs I've looked through it seems the main collusion was these guys never calling each other's allins, they just never get it in against each other (in a game where if 2 players get it in they are almost always both losing equity while everyone else at the table gains).

This alone is worth a few percentage points to their ROI in each game, in games where a good ROI is 5%, and is almost impossible to detect, plus there were so damn many of them.

Although bit of a coincidence that so many players from the same place in China are all playing DoNs and winning and cashing out, should have been picked up by stars when they were all cashing out imo.

[paulhouk03]

pretty sick

parts of china are redic poor and chinese ppl will do anything to make some money.

still does not condone to cheat ppl out of money tho.

[Simon Galloway]

I played a recreational number of $50 and $100 DoNs but gave up as early as summer last year when I saw my ROI tumble.  It wasn't so much the ROI, just the point blank refusal to accept that some of the systematic walking (bubble time, 4 walks, 2 unaware players getting their blind pressed every time ~ you fold as someone will be 95% AI posting their blind in a mo and they get walked...)

I speak to a lot of players playing SNG, many of whom are very sharp and yet all have failed to jump from $20 to $50 DoN.  Without assistance, it seems it is pretty hard.

As for refunds, Stars need to dig deep.  I totally agree that just re-distributing confiscated funds is inadequate.  At a minimum, they can use raked revenue from DoNs and still not lose out considering they provided games that were clearly riddled with cheats that weren't being effectively monitored.  But to do things properly, actually taking a hit on their own dime would be good to see.

[TightEnd]

Simon and i talked about this last Autumn I think, that's when I gave them up as my ROIs had become even more minimal than usual!

[MC]

Interesting read mate...

[mondatoo]

So Online poker is rigged 

[sovietsong]

awesome blog entry dale.  750k is sick

[GreekStein]

omg this is why Paul Ho is recruiting for his stable! His horses have all been banned!

[Girgy85]

omg this is why Paul Ho is recruiting for his stable! His horses have all been banned!

lol

[titaniumbean]

omg this is why Paul Ho is recruiting for his stable! His horses have all been banned!

[The Camel]

How do Stars decide who gets paid and how much from cheats?

I'm assuming they lost their stake as well as their winnings?

Do the sixth and seventh get the prizes?

Or is the cheats funds simply split between all the losing players?

[Simon Galloway]

How do Stars decide who gets paid and how much from cheats?

I'm assuming they lost their stake as well as their winnings?

Do the sixth and seventh get the prizes?

Or is the cheats funds simply split between all the losing players?

Keith,
Cliffs from Dale's blog suggest the guy who actually reports it gets compensated very well, full refunds, keep any winnings etc, effectively freerolling WITH the cheats, albeit inadvertently.  Stars then disgorge all they can from the cheats accounts and use this to pay the compensation to all and sundry.  Which given most has been siphoned off, won't amount to much.

They won't give you the formula because somewhere in the algorithm it says "player Z gets $50 unless we only get $4 from the cheat in which case player Z gets $4"

[thetank]

I'm assuming they lost their stake as well as their winnings?

All money in cheaters accounts gets taken, but these guys took $750,000 from the tables in ill gotten winnings and will have gotten away with most of it.

It sounds like the cheating ring was well organized so I don't think they would have had more than $5k on average in the accounts (maybe even much less). So Stars look like they'll recover less than $200k.

The cheaters probably netted over half a million from the whole thing then. Dale and the grinders on 2+2 are making the case that Stars should make up the shortfall because they were charging rake for people to play in games that were bent up the yingyang.