Pokerbots, the truth from the source

[Sciolist]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
actually they can.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok. Describe the scientific method whereby any online player can know the truth of items #1 and #2 right now without having to trust the word of a 3rd party.

[/ QUOTE ]
Anyone who mails in can ask for their complete RM hand history. Whilst the OP doesn't agree that you can tell if a site is random or not from it, his argument makes no sense whatsoever.

[Sciolist]

[ QUOTE ]
Unabridged: Yes indeed. However, your scenario is actually more complicated than necessary. A site can shuffle quite honestly (using all the best hardware random noise type rng systems available) and pass every statistical test known and still cheat by doing nothing more than sending a single message to prop players notifying them that they have a guaranteed river win. A smart prop player can then creatively control when they win and lose even to the point of redistributing funds from winners to losers.

It takes about 2 lines of source code to do what I just described and very little bandwidth.

Maybe the OP can chime in here and verify the ease with which this is possible.

[/ QUOTE ]
Downside: Prop then documents the process and threatens to post it all on 2 + 2 if the site doesn't pay them a million dollars.

[RIIT]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Unabridged: Yes indeed. However, your scenario is actually more complicated than necessary. A site can shuffle quite honestly (using all the best hardware random noise type rng systems available) and pass every statistical test known and still cheat by doing nothing more than sending a single message to prop players notifying them that they have a guaranteed river win. A smart prop player can then creatively control when they win and lose even to the point of redistributing funds from winners to losers.

It takes about 2 lines of source code to do what I just described and very little bandwidth.

Maybe the OP can chime in here and verify the ease with which this is possible.

[/ QUOTE ]
Downside: Prop then documents the process and threatens to post it all on 2 + 2 if the site doesn't pay them a million dollars.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes indeed. The scenario is sound only if the prop has as much to lose as the site does. The prop player can of course be nothing other than a site operated bot.

[RIIT]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
actually they can.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok. Describe the scientific method whereby any online player can know the truth of items #1 and #2 right now without having to trust the word of a 3rd party.

[/ QUOTE ]
Anyone who mails in can ask for their complete RM hand history. Whilst the OP doesn't agree that you can tell if a site is random or not from it, his argument makes no sense whatsoever.

[/ QUOTE ]

The real money HH record does not constitute proof where #1 and #2 is concerned. If you disagree then please explain.

[kornman17]

So you got finally got the actual reason why sites are not "rigged".

RIIT: Anything that send stuff to the client is sci-fi, you can forget it right away. This is a scenario that you will build-in within the server. But you will not do it, because of guys like me.


[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Unabridged: Yes indeed. However, your scenario is actually more complicated than necessary. A site can shuffle quite honestly (using all the best hardware random noise type rng systems available) and pass every statistical test known and still cheat by doing nothing more than sending a single message to prop players notifying them that they have a guaranteed river win. A smart prop player can then creatively control when they win and lose even to the point of redistributing funds from winners to losers.

It takes about 2 lines of source code to do what I just described and very little bandwidth.

Maybe the OP can chime in here and verify the ease with which this is possible.

[/ QUOTE ]
Downside: Prop then documents the process and threatens to post it all on 2 + 2 if the site doesn't pay them a million dollars.

[/ QUOTE ]

[RIIT]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Your site cannot prove that they are not doing the following:

1) Skewing shuffles
2) Hinting players

[/ QUOTE ]

What would you like them to do?

What hurdle would you think is reasonable?

[/ QUOTE ]

Josem:

#1 is a solvable proof with player determined shuffling (the PBWC guys are doing this for their event).

#2 is not a solvable proof in an encrypted internet environment.

To solve the proof of #2 you must use a plain text (unencrypted) open source message protocol from server to client and you must put a 3rd party sniffer on the line to police the entire message stream from server to client in order to prove that the server never sent a hint of any kind to any player during the course of a hand. This does not actually prove that no hints happened but merely that no hints happened over the lan line that connects the server computer and the client computers.

It is easy to verify the single lan connection upon visual inspection. It is another matter entirely to prove that the lan line between server and client is the only connection that exists; you'd have to be able to show that no wireless connection existed between server and client(s) or any other type of connection for that matter.

The fact that #2 is not solvable in an internet enironment means that players will forever be forced to place faith and trust in the word and character of the site operator.

And thus online poker is somewhat similar to a religion.

[fishbutt]

[ QUOTE ]

And thus online poker is somewhat similar to a religion.

[/ QUOTE ]

Funniest post I've seen in a while. I LOLed.

[Alex Scott]

As a member of PokerStars Game Security team, I thought I would comment on this thread. Despite the exaggerations in OP's posts, some of what they have to say is valid and/or true.

I'd also like to assure 2+2ers that OP is and was never a member of the PokerStars team - but that is probably obvious anyway from the terminology they have used.

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

At PokerStars this is not the case.

[ QUOTE ]
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.”.

[/ QUOTE ]

Further proof that the site in question is not PokerStars, since we don't offer telephone support except in Deposit Assistance.

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true. The vast majority of bots are losers. Lots of people try out a program but don't carry on using it because it either doesn't work properly or loses them money. They don't realise how much work it takes to make a bot win.

Obviously, somebody who tries one out once is not going to be treated the same as somebody who is trying to run a custom-designed stealth bot. The former may not even realise that it is prohibited software, but the latter shows clear malicious intent.

In the former case, standard procedure is to freeze the player's account and send an email warning. To have their account reinstated, the player needs to acknowledge the rules and agree not to use any prohibited software in future. Their account is then reopened - but if they do reoffend, they can expect it to be closed permanently.

In the latter case, the player's account is closed straight away, and funds may be confiscated for distribution to players on an Exposure To Harm (ETH) basis.

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't agree with this and I would not want to work for a company that had this attitude towards it's customers. At PokerStars we reward our very frequent and winning players in many ways with our FPP system. Some of the biggest winners online play at PokerStars - we do not punish them in any way, or find a way to close their account.

That said, winning players are subject to proportionally more security checks. That's because they generally cash out more than losing players, and cashouts are always accompanied by a security review. We also review players who request access to the super high stakes 'restricted' and 'special' games. Big winners are also much more frequently reported as colluders or bots (especially those that play large numbers of tables at once), simply because their aggressive play sometimes resembles cheating, especially in the eyes of an inexperienced player. Of course of each these reports is examined as standard.

So while we don't go out of our way to find problems with big winners' accounts, it is perhaps more likely that we will find a problem if it's there, since big winners are under constant scrutiny.

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't agree that any method of bot detection can be that foolproof, and I think it's a mistake to suggest that it's that easy to find a bot. At PokerStars, we have a reputation amongst the bot community as being the hardest place to get away with botting online (read the bot forums, for example, and you'll see people warned off using their bot at our site). But we would never claim to be able to detect bots with a 100% or even 99% success rate.

It's a constant battle, between us bot hunters and the bot developers. Developers figure out something that we look for and implement countermeasures, we develop something new to counter that, and so on. It's like anything - the second you develop technology to find something, somebody develops even more advanced technology to hide it again.

The key for poker sites is that they stay one step ahead of bot developers. There will always be some custom-designed programs that slip through the net and no method of bot-detection will ever be perfect, but eventually it will become so difficult to use bots that most people will stop bothering.

We do not ignore reports of bot use either. However, bot reports are generally very unreliable because the vast majority of people have no clue what to look for when it comes to bots, and even if they did they wouldn't have the tools available to do so.

Take multitabling for example. Some people write to us saying, in essence: 'This player is playing 12 tables at once, AND still chatting! That's not humanly possible.' But in fact, bots generally do the exact opposite, trying to look as incognito as possible by playing just one or two low-limit tables. Very few bot users draw attention to themselves by playing large numbers of tables.

There was a bot thread at 2+2 not long ago, where some players over at Full Tilt were accused of being bots because their PokerTracker statistics were identical. 2+2 should be utterly ashamed of that thread - it was an absolute travesty of misinformation.

The problem is, people who do know about bot detection can't make their knowledge public, because doing so would educate those who write bots and make them harder to catch.

[ QUOTE ]
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).

[/ QUOTE ]

This is nonsense. It's common knowledge, for example, that Hevad Khan (RaiNKhAN) was reported so frequently as a bot that we had a template response especially for his case. To prove he wasn't a bot, Hevad sent us this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...70502910175629

To date Hevad is still a prolific SuperNova player, and finished at the final table of the WSOP Main Event this year after qualifying through PokerStars.

Anyway, I hope I've shed some light on this, which I think has been an interesting discussion so far.

Alex S
PokerStars Game Security

PS. Please do not PM me with support issues, as I cannot respond to them here. Email support@pokerstars.com instead.

[Backspin20]

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.”.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Further proof that the site in question is not PokerStars, since we don't offer telephone support except in Deposit Assistance."

I spoke with someone in Security today a few times infact when my account was frozen....

[Alex Scott]

My apologies - you're right, Security will sometimes call players too. But in general we don't offer telephone support and even security calls are relatively rare.