Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you do?
 

(CLIFF NOTES) - player X is most likely a bot. He is easy to beat, and plays 20 tables at a time. Three questions come out of my rant below, and are the following:

1. Is this player a bot, and/or what are the chances he is?
2. Since he isn't very good regardless, is it still my obligation to report him?
3. Am I violating any T/Cs if I choose to just follow him around and try to clean him out assuming I don't report him?

Before I get in to details, I'd like it to be clear that I'm not in any way a tinfoil hatter when it comes to "zomg bots are everywhere" and "site x is rigged for (insert stupid reason here." If anything, I think that bots are most likely out there, but are also mostly losing players or easily exploitable.

Also, I use too many commas and probably include more words and details than necessary. I apologize in advance to any reader who finds this annoying.

Here is what happened last night on Pokerstars.

I'm cruising along late last night (2am or so) playing SNGs and .10/.25 NL to kill time before I go to sleep. I generally don't pay much attention to player habits (PT and PAHUD are good enough), so for me to notice anything makes it likely that the behavior is extremely obvious to a better player. I observe the following at the cash table:

1. There is a player who takes almost exactly 15 seconds to make every decision, even those that don't involve money (folding preflop, checking the BB when nobody has raised, etc). This reason specifically ends up being why I get involved, but more on that later.

2. He doesn't respond to anyone in the chat box, including variations of his SN and the word bot. Lets say his SN is botmaster. I started saying things like "hey b0tmaster, tell your bot to stop using an abacus to calculate pot odds" to see if there was a script to "red flag" a table, as I figure any bot maker with brains would do this.

3. I check to see what else he's playing, and see he is playing 20+ tables, all at the .10/.25 level, and always starts with $25 stacks. I know this is technically possible, especially with hotkeys, but this furthers my suspicions that something is up.

4. When I finally include his SN spelled correctly and the word bot in the same sentence, he begins ranting almost instantly about his not being a bot, that I'm an idiot, and how he "dares me to prove that he's running bots." He more or less brags about how they'll never be able to prove anything, and that he's been investigated before, etc etc. His play also speeds up to that of a regular player.

Long story short (sort of), I end up telling him that honestly I don't care what he's doing (as he's dumping chips like crazy and plays predictably), and that I just wanted him to speed up his game. I explain that most of what I said was just a level to get his attention and get him to manually play this table, including my joke about transferring me a few grand so I "forget" that I noticed anything. He insults me a bit more, realizes that he just got leveled (and leveled hard), and then stops chatting.

Within 5 minutes, he's back to 10-15 seconds per decision, unresponsive, and seemed to have returned to bot mode. I check a few other tables he's at and it's the same thing on all of them. His SN on Stars is left out for obvious reasons, and my SN is completely different than my 2p2 name.

So, for all the people here smarter than me and more experienced in outing bots, what would you do? If he is a botter, his logic is very exploitable. He seems to have a deep bankroll that came from one large tourney/SNG win (his sharkscope has a negative ROI until one giant straight line upward), and probably isn't in danger of getting caught. Am I obligated to report this player, or should I continue to just use his weak spots to make as much as I can?

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you do?
 

stopped reading at step 3 because this person isnt a bot

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

Tubk: I'm not doubting that people can play that many tables. I'm not aware of many that do, but I know they're out there. If I'm an idiot and this is standard practice, let me know. However, further details would be nice.

I should include this point: He basically incriminates himself in his chat by bragging that "he'll never get caught" and "I can't prove anything" etc etc.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

can you cut and paste the actual chat?

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]


I should include this point: He basically incriminates himself in his chat by bragging that "he'll never get caught" and "I can't prove anything" etc etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

He's messing with you. There are like six billion people 20 tabling stars.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

EDIT: Per response by 2p2 legend, I don't think it's worth pursuing. I wasn't aware that many people were doing the 20+ table action.

Let me run through it really quick...I am reluctant to put anything that could actually lead to his real SN, as I don't want to accuse somebody directly for a lot of reasons. If he is just one of those guys capable of grinding 20 tables, the last thing I want is to cause any problems. I'll take the chat history, swap out the names, and take out hand history numbers, but leave all the chat untouched. Give me a few minutes to edit accordingly.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

I don't play 20 tables but ill often play 9-12 and i don't talk a lot and i miss a lot of chat in the box because the tables are small enough to only show 3 lines and chat gets covered up by "bantam222 wins $100 with three nines" and i usually ignore it because there are a lot of dumb [censored] talking but if i saw someone trying to talk to me i usually respond eventually...

slow play = lots of tables???

always reloaded to $25...probably a script...a lot of multitablers use them because it can be hard to keep a 100BB stack...just gives you another thing to worry about and you can be missing ev by having less then 100BB

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

Set Mr. Gatorade on him

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
Set Mr. Gatorade on him

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent idea. A cynic would think that Gatorade only gets fired up about busting a 'bot' after it takes a few k off him, but we all know his heart is pure -- he will be on this. His only goal is to rid the world of bots.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

I'm 37 and am not as quick a thinker as a lot of 2+2'ers nor do I have any of the AHK scripts but I can play 20 tables of full-ring NL on Stars reasonably easily.
Once I get to 22-24 tables it gets a bit messy for me.
But 18-20 tables of full-ring NL is a breeze.

Him taking too long can mean that he's just playing a lot of tables obviously. But when he finally saw the chat he responded and that kept him more focused to act on that table quicker.

15 seconds also sounds like the amount of time it takes before the warning-beep thing goes off for a player, right?
If he's ALWAYS acting exactly the same amount of time on every single action then I guess that is suspicious.

But when I hear "every single time" I usually take that to mean "most of the time, when I was noticing...but I wasn't looking at every single one of his actions on every single table."

None of this means that guy wasn't running a bot of course.
But I think the evidence is far from conclusive that he is...as all of the stuff that is supposedly so suspicios in the OP doesn't really sound too different from how a lot of people go about 20-tabling.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

You do run macros at least for folding, right Bob? If not, you are nuts [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

MICROBOB: the timing was EXACT on every single hand. Trust me when I say that I don't pay nearly enough attention to things like that to pick up on a specific pattern unless it's ridiculously obvious. I agree with you (and as a lurker tend to respect your opinions) on the fact that nothing is conclusive. I am used to slow players who I assume are playing tons of tables, but what set off the red flag initially was the clear and exact timing for every action he made. I'm not the type of makes an issue over game speed (like the "zzzzz" chatters), but this was ridiculous.

I looked through the chat log, and honestly based on the feedback I don't think it's conclusive enough to warrant an investigation (especially a fanatical one).

I still think he's running bots that override to manual play when certain events occur, but turning the guy's life upside down via Mr. Gatorade seems a little harsh. As I said before, I'm no expert on this, and now that I'm aware that 20+ tabling is not unusual I see no need to post the transcript.

I will say that there were several comments from railbirds (at .10/.25?) when the subject came up, which makes me think somebody else is already watching.

If I see the SN at it again, and anything interesting happens, I'll probably change my mind. This is exactly why I went to the community for guidance, and based on the input of the regulars I'm letting it go.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

you guys are retarded with bots. They can't play 20+ tables. They need to screen scrape the tables and the tables need to be 100% visible. They also need to press the buttons on the poker client and trying to press 5 of them at the same time would cause it to freeze up (I"m assuming if you're 20 tabling that 5 tables need attention at the same time.)

No PC can handle the CPU usage of trying to 20 table a bot. Jesus.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
you guys are retarded with bots. They can't play 20+ tables. They need to screen scrape the tables and the tables need to be 100% visible. They also need to press the buttons on the poker client and trying to press 5 of them at the same time would cause it to freeze up (I"m assuming if you're 20 tabling that 5 tables need attention at the same time.)

No PC can handle the CPU usage of trying to 20 table a bot. Jesus.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now I'm far from an expert on bots, but I disagree with this. I would imagine that any bot that gets past security would be connecting to the poker client via a remote desktop. Given that shared processing power is available for rent (and through botnets like Storm), wouldn't it be possible for a whole gang of computers to be sharing the load from the host computer?

Look at things like click fraud - IIRC correctly something like 25% of all search engine clicks are estimated to be fraudulent, and I know personally of networks capable of generating millions of pageviews and clicks across thousands of sites - all without any human interaction. Working at an ad network has exposed me to some coding/automated setups that go beyond what I thought was technically possible with current technology.

Look up Storm Worm (and how it works) if you want to see what's already out there (teh rize of teh masheens!).

This is a little off topic, but to say that it's impossible to have a computer setup that's automated and can play 20+ poker tables is, in my opinion, wrong. Does that mean somebody actually has one and is using it right now? Not at all.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
(CLIFF NOTES) - player X is most likely a bot. He is easy to beat, and plays 20 tables at a time. Three questions come out of my rant below, and are the following:

1. Is this player a bot, and/or what are the chances he is?

[/ QUOTE ]

Zero.

[ QUOTE ]
2. Since he isn't very good regardless, is it still my obligation to report him?

[/ QUOTE ]

You just did. <grin> My "short" finding is above. My long one is below.

[ QUOTE ]
3. Am I violating any T/Cs if I choose to just follow him around and try to clean him out assuming I don't report him?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

[ QUOTE ]
Here is what happened last night on Pokerstars (Cliff notes):

[/ QUOTE ]

You saw a player playing 20 tables, acting slowly (10-15 secs at each one). You chatted him up and challenged him and though it took him a while, he eventually responded.

I believe this is the chat in question. I have edited it to protect the identity of all involved. OP, please correct me if I am wrong about this being the session:

[ QUOTE ]


OP you put down the abacus i see <userID>
OP i appreciate it
.
.
.
OP hah, <userID> - you need to tweak your bot's "crafty" setting
OP alright, this has to be the worst bot ever
P2 Bot? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
OP you dont find the play "odd"
P1 are you aking me?
P2 Uhm, never though of it
OP he can feel free to say "hey guys, im a person"
P3 <userID> = BOTTTT
OP no, was talking to P2
MrX your all morons
OP there you are
MrX i love how stupid these limits are
OP i knew i'd set off the script
P2 Haha
OP its ok
P2 <userID>, how much you winning at these limits?
OP just adjust the default tmer to not take as long
OP he's at 20 tables
MrX indeed...
MrX who cares
OP i tell you what
OP transfer me some cash
OP or maybe i just pop it up on 2p2 and let them figure out
OP hahaha
.
.
.
OP i dont see any transfers
MrX y the f would i do that?
MrX -ev
OP getting your funds frozen = -ev
MrX rofl
MrX k u can try
OP those 2p2 peeps love bot hunting
MrX u arent the 1st
OP ahhh
OP i see
MrX dont give a [censored] if u think im a bot
MrX tell support let them figure it out
OP i really don't care
OP i just wanted you to speed up
OP it was annoying
MrX u obv do...
OP no, dont
OP i really dont
OP because you have not won money
OP in fact
OP P1 has taken like $50 from you
MrX at 1 table...
OP right
OP my table, and i dont like waiting for you to make simple decisions
OP and so far, i'm winning
OP because A. you're now here
OP and B. you sped up your game
OP that is all
P2 Give him/her a break
P2 Playing 20 tables
P2 You said it yourself [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
MrX its not that difficult
MrX unless i gotta pis
OP all - it's over, i just wanted the game to move faster
OP mission accomplished



[/ QUOTE ]

Assuming "MrX" is the guy you saw (and I'd go all-in on that), I can assure you with absolute certainty that this player is not a bot. You seem to base your supposition on the fact that he plays 20 tables, and that he didn't answer your chat immediately, but later did so and began acting faster.

Without going into the nitty gritty detail of what we look at to make this determination, your observations are in fact rather exonerating themselves. A player who is playing 20 tables is frequently at the edge of his capabilities, with actions "stacked up", awaiting his input at multiple tables. Such a player rarely has time to chat -- a table pops up, they assess, make a snap decision and move on to the next game.

When he happened to note your chat, he sat out at several tables in order to slow down his decisions per hour in order to talk to you. When he felt the conversation was over, he returned to his full complement of games.

Based upon the proactive bot hunting tools we have, and a complete bot review of MrX, I can say with complete certainty that he's human. Playing 20 tables without chatting is nothing unusual (as 'edfurlong' noted in this thread, there is an unlimited supply of players doing "extreme multi-tabling"), nor is any of the other data we examine as a routine part of bot reviews. This player wouldn't have ever come up on our radar at all, so few flags does he raise (none).

In any case, thanks for your report, OP. Whether you report them directly to support@pokerstars.com (preferred) or just mention them here, we welcome the opportunity to perform an in-depth examination of any player suspected of being a bot.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.

Best Regards,

Jeff
PokerStars Game Security

P.S. No "PWNED" followups, please.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

Jeff,

That is truly excellent work. Congratulations.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

EDIT: While I have been pwned and openly admit it, I want to make one thing clear before the flame thrower lights. Jeff is correct in his theory that my basis for suspicion was entirely based on my lack of knowledge regarding the number of players routinely playing 20 tables or more. After being educated on this by edfurlong and others, I both dropped further investigation and pointed out that posting the chat log would only have negative results. I now feel like a douche and will hereby revert back to strictly lurking. PWNED.

That indeed is the chat...and my edited transcript is the same piece of the history.

As noted in the responses I made, I felt it unnecessary to post it both because I wasn't convinced he was a bot anymore, and it seemed a lot more incriminating at the time (2-3am).

However, the official (and timely) response is reassuring, and I have definitely been pwned.

Thanks for getting involved.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
You do run macros at least for folding, right Bob? If not, you are nuts [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]


I don't even know what that is.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

NH PSJeff.

Spaggy, don't feel too bad. Yes, you may have been pwned, but I have to say this is one of the best bot accusation threads I have seen here. You did a good job of explaining what made you suspicious, and you were open-minded when people provided you with explanations.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
NH PSJeff.

Spaggy, don't feel too bad. Yes, you may have been pwned, but I have to say this is one of the best bot accusation threads I have seen here. You did a good job of explaining what made you suspicious, and you were open-minded when people provided you with explanations.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks...I honestly feel like such a prick now that I know MrX is just a grinder. If I could apologize I would as what I said wasn't cool in light of my education.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]

Thanks...I honestly feel like such a prick now that I know MrX is just a grinder. If I could apologize I would as what I said wasn't cool in light of my education.

[/ QUOTE ]

From the description given he shouldn't be that tough to find.

The only dumb questions are the ones not asked.

And some by EricW and Dids.

I really wouldn't sweat it much.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
A cynic would think that Gatorade only gets fired up about busting a 'bot' after it takes a few k off him, but we all know his heart is pure -- he will be on this. His only goal is to rid the world of bots.

[/ QUOTE ]

Original post said something along the lines of "SIC MR. HATERADE ON EM" but I thought it was too cynical, glad you covered my slack for me [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
NH PSJeff.

Spaggy, don't feel too bad. Yes, you may have been pwned, but I have to say this is one of the best bot accusation threads I have seen here. You did a good job of explaining what made you suspicious, and you were open-minded when people provided you with explanations.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks...I honestly feel like such a prick now that I know MrX is just a grinder. If I could apologize I would as what I said wasn't cool in light of my education.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hello Spaggy,

First, a side note. If you really would like to pass along a private message to "MrX", send it to me in an Email to support@pokerstars.com from your validated PokerStars Email. Put "For Jeff" in the subject line. It will get to me, and I will pass it along to him on your behalf after editing out your Email address.

Again, please don't feel pwned. That truly wasn't my intent. Reports of bot suspicions based upon "I saw MrX playing at N tables, and no human can possibly be doing that" are as common as can be and have been around since 'RaiNKhAn' first demonstrated that extreme multi-tabling was possible.

Such reasons are probably the number one justification cited in player reports of bot suspicions... and they're almost always incorrect, so much so that we have a "canned" answer that we use in response to such Emails (after a thorough review exonerates them):

[ QUOTE ]
Thank you for your email. I will do my best to address your concerns.


There are a handful of players on PokerStars who play a seemingly impossible number of tournaments at once. However, we do have an extensive arsenal of detection tools in order to ensure that each player is a human being. Please rest assured that we do not tolerate
automated players (bots) on PokerStars.


While I cannot detail each of the tools we use to make this
determination (we don't want our methods to fall into the hands of bot programmers who will then use that information to avoid detection), I can assure you that we have reviewed this player and s/he is most definitely not a bot. It is a human player on all counts.


Massively parallel play is not by itself a reliable harbinger of a bot. There are reasonable explanations as to how players can play such a large number of games at once. The most tables I've seen concurrently played (and we've seen it in the flesh), is 31 tables on a single 17" notebook computer... and that player did this without timing out.


There are players capable of rapid-fire decisions and quick precision mouse clicks out there. Many of these players are previously trained or experienced in online video games such as StarCraft, where as many as 120 decisions and clicks per minute are required! To reduce that to a mere 20 to 40 decisions per minute as would be required for a couple dozen poker games would be quite simple for such players.


If you have any further questions, please let us know.


[/ QUOTE ]

I also meant what I said earlier. It is very important that as players, you're comfortable with and confident in the security of PokerStars games. It wasn't pwnage I was going for, but to inspire that level of confidence in our ability to keep the bots out, both in you and secondarily in readers of this thread.

I really wish I could show you some of the cool stuff we've developed since the TeddyFBI's mom case demonstrated to us that we needed much better tools for bot detection, both for reacting to reports like yours, and proactively hunting them down on our own. Let's just say... Mr. Gatorade would be rather pleased, and that these tools are a primary reason that Gatorade's list of "known" bots has yet to include a PokerStars player.

If anyone got pwned, it was and is those who think they can run a bot undetected on PokerStars. Will a handful get away with doing so? Surely -- we have no illusions of perfection, and there will always be those few bot developers who have thought about detection evasion as much as we have thought about detection.

But they're drawing very nearly dead.

Best Regards,

Jeff
PokerStars Game Security

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

Well said Jeff. Thanks

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
you guys are retarded with bots. They can't play 20+ tables. They need to screen scrape the tables and the tables need to be 100% visible. They also need to press the buttons on the poker client and trying to press 5 of them at the same time would cause it to freeze up (I"m assuming if you're 20 tabling that 5 tables need attention at the same time.)

No PC can handle the CPU usage of trying to 20 table a bot. Jesus.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now I'm far from an expert on bots, but I disagree with this. I would imagine that any bot that gets past security would be connecting to the poker client via a remote desktop. Given that shared processing power is available for rent (and through botnets like Storm), wouldn't it be possible for a whole gang of computers to be sharing the load from the host computer?

Look at things like click fraud - IIRC correctly something like 25% of all search engine clicks are estimated to be fraudulent, and I know personally of networks capable of generating millions of pageviews and clicks across thousands of sites - all without any human interaction. Working at an ad network has exposed me to some coding/automated setups that go beyond what I thought was technically possible with current technology.

Look up Storm Worm (and how it works) if you want to see what's already out there (teh rize of teh masheens!).

This is a little off topic, but to say that it's impossible to have a computer setup that's automated and can play 20+ poker tables is, in my opinion, wrong. Does that mean somebody actually has one and is using it right now? Not at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, VM Ware can be used to create multiple sessions, but the issue is that you can't open stars up multipler times, it will only allow you to log in once. You log in from one VM session and start playing...you open up another VM session and try to loginto stars and you'll have issues.

Re: Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you d
 

PokerstarsJeff or Pokerstorm, glad to see you guys are on the job. I just wonder if you say a word about the $47K incident with pokergirl, I realize FT is your competitor and you probably won't or shouldn't say anything derogatory about them but how can you do something in minutes that takes them weeks? or maybe just some sanitized point of view about everything that has taken place so far.