| Pokerstars Finally Speak After Bot Episode Worries Players |
On Monday Betastic reported on PokerStars freezing ten player accounts as they were found to be the work of bots and not humans.A member of the PokerStars Games Security team has posted a reply on the2+2 poker thread which has caused so much debate and anger towards PokerStars for the existence and apparent lack of immediate action against bots. PokerStars felt the need to to clarify this extremely delicate situation and correct “several misconceptions” regarding this case.
Setting the Record Straight
A member of PokerStars' Games Security, posted as PokerStarsJeff, wrote: “First, as of the afternoon of July 17, we have indeed removed ten players from the site for violations of our terms of service. We cannot give additional details about which accounts, or the specific reasons for their removal.”
He further commented on a post to this 2+2 thread which erroneously stated that PokerStars gave an “All Clear” to the three accounts which were the original issue of debate: “PokerStars absolutely did *not* exonerate these players from being bots at any time. We conducted a review of the three users listed in the OP for collusion, and it was negative, and this was reported to the OP, who posted an incorrect “PokerStars said ‘All Clear’ here.”
With regards to the third party who tipped PokerStars off about seven additional players being potential bots, PokerStars commented:
“PokerStars had also identified 7 additional players very early in our investigation - prior to the third party site's identification of them. We were conducting a very in depth search to locate other potential accounts, to ensure we had located all of the accounts prior to closing them down concurrently.
Shutting down only part of a ring in mid-investigation can spook additional, undiscovered accounts into cashing out prior to locating them. As of this afternoon, July 17, that review concluded that the ten accounts were the complete extent of the matter.”
In reply to a 'frustrated' post from MicroBoB, which read:
“Stars, with however many staff they have who are specifically paid to find this stuff, were unable to detect it after being told by people on here to look for it. It's not even a matter of them just not having checked on them or it just slipped past them. They were actually actively looking directly at these players and investigating them and still couldn't see it.”
PokerstarsJeff wrote: “Please note that third party sites did not locate this ring unassisted. They had a baseline of three identical player profiles from which to start, which is a far more trivial task than saying "here's a collection of 4 million players... now, find me 3 who are identical.... without a baseline from which to search." One is a linear search (searching for a particular pattern) and the other is exponentially more difficult based upon the number of players. PokerStars located the rest of the ring faster than did the third party site.”
He finished by explaining how difficult bots can be to detect and that PokerStars are always on the look out for them, as player protection is of primary importance:
“...the bots were fairly sophisticated in certain aspects, including their human behaviour modelling and their stealth capabilities. Our tools for bot detection are sophisticated, but they are not perfect. No site can guarantee you that they are completely free of bots.
“What PokerStars can and does pledge is that we use our extensive tools behind the scenes to detect bots as best we can... and they are very effective. We detect and remove most bots well before they even leave the development stage, and well before they could play long enough to come to the attention of players or third party databases the way these players did.
“PokerStars takes its commitment to bot detection and removal extremely seriously, and will continue to do so, both behind the scenes with our tools (which are under constant review and improvement), and in response to player-generated suspicions. Most player reports of bot suspicions are false alarms, but we still investigate each one thoroughly, and when they actually do locate a previously undetected bot, appropriate action will always be taken.”
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