Why even bother?
Posted by Racerboy
Posted by
Racerboy
posted in
Gen. Poker
Why even bother?
Why should we even bother to study poker when all these real time GTO advisors getting more popular and widely spread? Just by a simple search on google you will find very sophisticated products, that can run on a separate PC. I can only imagine what kind of dream machines there are out there that aren't public. It seems like these things are close to impossible to fight. There has to be some drastic changes to the game to make these software less powerful. Like random additions to the rules that changes on a weekly basis, like the 72 game or something like that. Or some AI that decides if you play to close to optimal for a real human. That would require a lot of work and investments from the operators tho, something I dont't see happening on a site like stars.
Just by looking at the Pokerstars mid stake lobby you will find out that basically all the biggest winners are Eastern European accounts, that previously has been inactive or small winners over a long period of time to then re-emerge to become the biggest winners in the games.
The graphs usually looks like this.
These are only 5 random accounts that were online now. In fact, you can go to Pokerstars lobby and just pick a random Eastern European account and I promise that at least 1 in 3 has a graph just like that. Starting to crush mid 2017/early2018.
To me it looks very clear that these players got access to some kind of software around the same time. These random accounts are both FR/6max players, so they differ quite a bit in stats.
Graphs from https://statname.net/
If you are an honest player and playing in these games. Please be careful or just stay away from the games. You cant beat this.
Loading 27 Comments...
Are you sure the site just doesn't have data going further back?
Yes pretty sure. Tracking starts around 2014. Although, I can't say with 100% certainty that the data is accurate enough to draw good conclusions. It seems reasonable enough when I compare with my own results tho. And the site does not track zoom.
Ok, thanks.
fuck it. you have just gotta deal with it, if they are using software then I guess that sucks but you can't really control what they are doing, I would just mail Stars and tell them about your suspicions. I agree though, I see these random accounts coming from nowhere, have never played with them in a tournament or in cash and then they are 4 tabling 500z. and i'm thinking to myself that there is something very dodgy going on here. you can't just come up from nowhere and know how to beat 500z having never played on Stars before (in 99% of cases.)
it's still possible to have a good win rate though, i'm happy with mines this year, you just gotta mix up your game, beat the more honest regs and confuse the potential bot regs. then exploit the fish, and you can still win.
get out of that victim mentality, it's very weak and defeatist. email Stars and then take back your power and get to the studying grind! ultimately these accounts will get banned, they may be around for 6 months or a year, but you can be around for much longer than that and make much more money than them in the long term :)
for example the Oborra account got banned, but in just over a year it only won $80k according to hsdb so not that much really. the best regs would have won way more than that in that time period. and now it is banned so it's whatever. you don't really see these random accounts any more at high stakes, would be far too obvious imo a guy coming from nowhere and I doubt regs would even play with such an account.
Well, I kinda agree with you. We as players only have two options. Deal with it or quit playing. I still felt like I needed to warn others who didn't know about this. So everyone has the ability to make a good assessment if they should keep playing in games with these guys or not. Secondly, I have contacted the Pokerstars support about these accounts. They are so many tho, so I am sure iv'e missed some. I urge others to do the same thing. It really makes you wonder about stars alleged bot detecting system. If accounts like this, that just pops up from nowhere with sky high win rates doesn't raise any red flags, what does?
Good stuff guys. The impression I've had of software assistance and bots in ring games with no collusion is that they mostly makes the games worse by making rec to reg ratio worse. The Libratus and Claudico bot challenges showed how good of a bot is necessary to actually beat top humans and that was in HU. Maybe that is starting to change? I also thought stars was more on top of this after second Oborra ban and they figured out how to ban GTO assistance is Spins. Stars do at least seem interested in developing ways to asses if people are cheating and enforce their rules, but their focus seems to mostly be on their cash cow Spins.
Kalupso
Clearly I'm not updated with the second Oborra ban and how Stars banned realtime GTO advisors in spins. Can you please elaborate a bit further or just link me to something? Ty
This?
Stars has banned tons of that stuff and it doesn't appear to be easy to cheat on Stars. However party, 888 and other sites have had those problems for a couple of years already without doing much to prevent it.
I think 888 does ban some cheaters because tere was one player I played in HU SNGs on 888 around a year ago that was likely to be a GTO bot (strong river XR strategies and overall quite balanced) that suddenly went from high volume to stop playing and I got refunded a small amount 6 months later. I haven't played any other European site other than Stars the last year and I don't follow the games closely so I can't comment on the state of the games but overall from what I hear and have seen WPN, party and 888 have way more cheating than a few of the other sites.
And regarding OBORRA. I don't think it makes much sense for them to play that high. Safety in numbers seems to be the key for them to not get detected. And I think high stakes players are much better qualified to raise suspicions than the regular at nl100. And yet it took Pokerstars over a year to get him banned.
agreed, that was pretty stupid really. it makes the most sense for them to play at lower limits where they have less funds to be seized, and where the pools of players are much larger so it will take them longer to become detected. but I guess we just have to get to high stakes asap to avoid all of these bots, that seems to be the best strat :P
I think in case of oborra it speaks well of pokerstars security. Because he was a very good human player to begin, with real time assistance, they couldn't just ban him just because a couple of HS players were suspicious.
He had been under investigation before, and passed security probably because he played well and similar to the data they had on him, even without any assistance. On a second investigation he probaly failed the test so they banned him then and refunded money.
I think that's the solution, or we could have arbitrary bans or ignoring the problem like some other sites do without any thorough research or investigation.
interesting finding here
715K hands in 1 month? that's like playing 24tables and 14+ hours a day???and not moving up stake???
how could it be possible?
lol. plz report that to Stars, don't think I've played 4.4 million hands in my 6 years as a pro haha
Decent work ethic! Jokes aside, this is ridiculous. This "player" plays more hands in a month than many regs do in a year, with the modest winrate of 10bb/100. And yet it took stars 6+ months to act (I guess he got banned in Aug).
Or maybe he couldn't handle the -$1 downswing in Aug and decided to quit.
I think the issue is threatning but at the same token, I don't think it is widespread enough. Imho, when things will get very nasty, sites will do something.
For example, let's say someone or many people have a very powerful bot, sites can analyze the stats and come up with a solution: a ban. There's a 3rd party firm that work on these things.
Regarding real time GTO advisors, again this can be lead to a player ban if the strategies are too similar with one player and another one.
It's funny though, because these things can be automated without that effort.
Also, I can see coming arguments like "sites don't care as long they make rake", well that's not the case. Poker is a very lucrative business for site to be ruined. When the shit will hit the fan, something will be done.
Can these bots really play that well? Do they really proactively change their play and give you a hard time? I'm not sure I ever played against a bot but since we are a long ways away from solving this game couldn't you find spots that the bot doesn't know how to play well and counter exploit the thing to death before it's owner ever figures out that you beat the ever loving EV out of the thing?
I don't know about Stars but in the US market, the bots are one thing but even if you figure them out: The sites are all rigged. RNG rigging, collusion, house players, super accounts, bots, scripts. It absolutely is not worth it to even bother. You're literally not allowed to make money. If you start to: beat after beat after beat after beat until it's time to put more money on the site.
US poker is dead. Global will have to shut down soon enough since it's obvious it's rigged now and then that really does leave no legitimate options. RIP poker.
Lol. they find a simple solution. BUMHUNT (lucky83o,umborSS is 100%)
The winrate that's possible, on some rec networks, by simply doing this is SO astronomical that it's actually a little unbelievable at times. I've sat there watching guys play 100nl, 3 handed, just pouring BI's down the tubes for hours. The same guys are there every single day/night, too. Some just clearly drunk and not even going to recall the session.
Of course they do not detect real cheaters but they warned me becuase i forgot to close omaha equilab before launching the client (only for withdrawing my 37$ profit).
Let's face it: online holdem is dying and we will have to move on to other games
I have tried to keep things closed while playing on Global but have had Flopzilla or Equilab just open out of habit in the background a few times. Is this not allowed? I haven't been warned about anything (yet).
It's not allowed on pokerstars when running their client even if you are not playing. if you are not careful you can get your funds frozen i guess.
GTO+ have a safity feature that will prevent you from opening it while running the pokerstars client.
I wonder how many high stake pros run cheat software on a second computer, will be almost impossible to detect.
Some mid-high stakes players when they don't grind do studies and at the same time control lobby, create new tables (pokerstars)
Pretty sure they have different setup for grinding and can study on another one to not close client. Well they might be able to do it both at the same time, run some solutions and play
I certainly wish they would let us track our winnings on a built in graph or something on Global. I'm absolutely crushing it up through 10NL already.
I can legitimately say that up through 25nl in the US market, botting isn't going to be a true concern for you today. Things are much better than they were over the last 6-18 months on this front. WPN continues to seem like an outlier in this regard and is just absolutely lambasted daily on the 2p2 forums. I've played there lately but honestly didn't have any personal complaints. That said, we're talking about a lot of botting reports from higher stakes like 50nl++. A ton of collusion ring reports, as well. Take all of that for whatever you will. Global, Horizon, BetOnline, WPN, Ignition, and others - We do have some options right now. Back in 2012, most of us would have killed for what we have today and it's easy to forget that.
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