Bots Discovered at PokerStars
PokerStars is one of the leading online poker rooms. Last week online players discovered a bots ring operating at that site. A bots ring is a set of computers programmed to play poker that participate on the games at online poker rooms pretending to be human players. This is not allowed at any online poker room. The beginning of this revelation is in many ways similar to the super user scandal at Ultimate Bet, but one hopes that it will not end the same way.
The bots were first suspected by a player using the alias “malloc”. He found that three “players” were making near identical moves in fixed cycles. He posted his views on an online forum but did not get any support. Suspicions were aroused on a larger scale when data from Poker Table Ratings (PTR) was analyzed. PTR is a web site that aggregates the moves made by millions of players at major online poker rooms and provides tools for analysis of the moves. PTR was the web site that pointed to the security hole on the Cereus Network, which is now being used by Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. Using data from PTR a player “Gugel” demonstrated that the three accounts named by “malloc” were being operated by the same computer program. On the same day PTR published a report that 10 accounts at PokerStars were part of a bots ring. The analysis presented in the report was so detailed and thorough and backed by statistics that there could be no room for doubt. PTR named the 10 accounts in its report.
Despite the PTR report PokerStars did not take immediate action and this aggravated many online players. These players also felt that PokerStars should have detected the bots ring before “malloc” and “Gugel” posted their suspicions, which led to PTR investigating the matter. PokerStars took action only on the next day when it shut down the accounts. A PokerStars representative posted that the online poker room had been seized of the matter and was carrying its own investigations. He said that the poker room had not reacted earlier, as was expected of it, because it wanted to make sure that the bots ring consisted of only 10 accounts.
The incident leaves an uneasy feeling that this is not the end of the matter. There will be the issue of compensating players who lost money on the tables with the bots.
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