Pokerbots, the truth from the source

[kornman17]

Hello,

I would like to start with two remarks.

First one is to the 2+2 users: I know I do not look trustworthy with my huge amount of posts (one), but I cannot magically do that. I will also be hardly able to reveal information proving what I write (without endangering myself), so the bottom line is - decide yourself if you want to trust me or not, and leave it at this.

Second one is to the moderators of the forum. The facts that I bring here (or from your perspective – “the claims”) are somewhat sensitive. I did my best to take care explicitly and have my writings acceptable and suitable for this forum and I hope the message overall is positive and valuable for the poker community to not deserve a ban.

OK, enough of disclaimers. The thing is that I am a former employee at one of the top 3 biggest poker site. Not just any employee. I worked in the so called black-belt investigation team, which is very technical team, close to development, but not visible/known neither to them, nor to other teams dealing with these matters.

The usually email signs you know “security team”, “investigation team”, etc. are most often just the primary offshore support, they have no clue of account related security. If your account is marked as a “bot” and your account is frozen, they will call you and read you the license agreement: “you have used out software in conjunction with 3rd party software which is in violation …” and if you interrupt them with “I have not used 3rd party software, I wrote the bot myself completely from scratch” they will stop, wonder how to proceed, tell you “ok, “sir”! We are going to escalate and re-investigate etc.”. This does not pass the next level thou.

Out team was the last level. There has to be top level escalation first, in order something to reach us. We were (when I say were – I mean the team still are, just I’m not part of it any longer) interfacing with no other department or team. So now I talk about some internals, that I believe you don’t know.

There are often nowadays discussions about poker robots. Here is the truth about them (at least in my former company, but I believe the others run models based on similar concepts, as that’s what simply make sense):

No one care about poker robots as such. The thing is that the company care about their own earnings (obviously) but next to that is the poker ecosystem. You would say how they can care for the ecosystem if they don’t care for the bots. The thing is that there is numerous number of losing bots that come and go. These feed the ecosystem as any other fish do. And these are really a lot, people try out stuff, changing it weekly, and still losing. This was eventually roughly 90+% of all the bots. The site makes money, and the poker ecosystem flourishes. On the other side, a winning bots (certainly there were such), and especially huge outstanding winner bots are enemy. Not only them. A consistently winning player, playing a lot, with somewhat high BB/100h is the same kind of enemy. They suck up money with speed sometimes faster than the site does (on the relative amount of tables), which destroys the ecosystem in some time (I believe you can do the calculation but these calculations and analysis we had done in details). These (real players as well as bots) were under fire. If it’s a bot, it’s killed right away, no issue. If it’s a real player, it’s randomly killed too (relation to fraudulent account etc.). You may again say – not much is heard about this in here, I don’t know the exact reason, I believe fair amount of the top winning players are 2+2iers, but you will actually more often here from killed bots in 2+2 as a way to get it back to the sites than from real players (maybe note also a major difference, if real player is killed, his account money are returned, bots are seized).

As for the bot detection, the technology is there. I know all of you (user, moderators) will get on your nails ready to delete my post. I won’t post details here “in order to educate the bot developers”. Just say that you may educate the bot developers as much as you want, bot detection lies on fundamental concepts that hardly can be exploited (they for sure can, as several of the major ones are client based, or joint, but this is of utmost complexity even for people that write the bots personally). Therefore, I can safely claim that 99.7+% of the bots used on the site were known to the site. If you wonder why often support leaves impression that your reports about bots are ignored – it’s simply because they are ignored, bots are known already. And if you “insist” too much on killing a bot that is a losing bot, site can eventually kill it (although undesired and has no point in doing that, just for the sake of keeping players calm. They will also kill a real player if you accuse him being bot and they get complains from too many people, it’s about having the players content and the overall ecosystem live).

Not only bot detection, but there are numerous ways to track fraudulent activities. I’m not talking here about totally clueless winholdem users, bot developers that develop everything from scratch, etc., they stand no chance. Just as a simple fact, 60+% of them cannot cope with the most obvious analysis you can imagine (just think of it straight – that’s it).

PM me if you want to spin off discussions on the sensitive info, I won’t discuss it here.

R.
Indy

[Ron Burgundy]

Could someone translate this post into English plz?

[DMoogle]

Kind of makes sense, except for some glaring holes: winning players keep tables going (if what you say is true, no poker room would ever ever hire prop players), and big losing players are generally much less profitable to the sites than big winning players.

[Onaflag]

[ QUOTE ]
(if what you say is true, no poker room would ever ever hire prop players)

[/ QUOTE ]

I know an online prop who was very recently fired for consistently winning.

Onaflag.......

[CountingMyOuts]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
(if what you say is true, no poker room would ever ever hire prop players)

[/ QUOTE ]

I know an online prop who was very recently fired for consistently winning.

Onaflag.......

[/ QUOTE ]

Story, please.

[Onaflag]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
(if what you say is true, no poker room would ever ever hire prop players)

[/ QUOTE ]

I know an online prop who was very recently fired for consistently winning.

Onaflag.......

[/ QUOTE ]

Story, please.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry. Can't. Flame if necessary. There are, however, people right here in this thread who can verify this as fact.

This particular claim by OP has happened. I doubt, though, that it happens/has happened at any of the 3 current mega-sites.

Onaflag........

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
I know an online prop who was very recently fired for consistently winning.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is a little different than anything else in this thread. Prop players are paid to nurture weak "ecosystems" by starting and maintaining tables. If they aren't doing that they should be let go and it doesn't really matter what the problem is.

1. Firing a prop is very different from barring a player. The prop is an employee and not a customer. The site has no obligation to keep paying an employee who is damaging the business. It's strictly a business decision and as a regular player I wouldn't be upset that a prop account was closed.

2. A very strong prop could backfire on the poker room. You can't build a successful business solely around props. "Amateur" winning and breakeven players are the primary table-starters and game-maintainers in any remotely healthy poker room. What if the prop is so strong that all the high-volume regular players are afraid to play him shorthanded? You aren't much of a prop if whenever you sit down at a shorthanded table two other players immediately sit out.

3. If the customers realize that a very strong player is a prop there can be problems. I resent sites that pay sharks to sit at my tables. Other less knowledgeable players may suspect the prop's success is not just skill and spread rumors of rigging.

4. Economically speaking a prop who is a big winner may be overpaid. Why pay 110% rakeback to someone who also sucks 4 BB/100 out of the room when another prop is willing to take the same 110% and only win 1 BB/100?

PS: Please no flames from working props. I realize perfectly that this sucks from your perspective and you have my sympathy. But it's no different than a thousand other businesses that may produce wonderful products and services while playing hardball with their employees.

[kyleb]

Good to know that one of two major sites that use props doesn't care about any of that, and that they have way too many of them to begin with.

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
Could someone translate this post into English plz?

[/ QUOTE ]
1. Bots exists
2. Most Bots are losers
3. Sites can effectively detect bots
4. Sites don't care about losing bots
5. Sites do care about winning bots and winning players and try to get rid of either

[ChipFerFree]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Could someone translate this post into English plz?

[/ QUOTE ]
1. Bots exists
2. Most Bots are losers
3. Sites can effectively detect bots
4. Sites don't care about losing bots
5. Sites do care about winning bots and winning players and try to get rid of either

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok ignore my previous post -- this is shorter by far and says the same thing...