Integrity Check - How can an online poker room make you feel secure these days?

[0546474]

I prefer to play poker only at the most famous poker rooms and I think that they do enough to fight bots, in general, at the moment I’m happy with everything!!! Perhaps in the future, with the development of technology and artificial intelligence, it will be necessary to create a commission that will monitor poker sites for the effectiveness of the fight against bots!!!

 

[Newzooozooo]

Hi
I only play on 2-3 sites that I consider quite reliable. But I think it will be right if poker sites will invest in new technologies and software that will detect fraudsters and prevent their fraudulent schemes.

 

[BillyR23]

A very interesting topic and it was nice to see the opinion of many members here...

About the news around and cheating in online poker- I'd say that this kind of things were always around and especially 'losing players' always cried it's rigged or other similar things for like forever and IMO this will never change lol... About the 1st question, I don't think about it and after I do my research and register at a site, I have complete trust that my money are safe and the games I play in are as fare as humanly possible and in case of rare occurrences that something unexpected happens- I'm confident all players/ victims involved will be compensated...About the 2nd question, I think that players having to use the cameras to record a bit of them playing and/or I am not a robot verifications from time to time are the best solutions that pretty much everyone won't have big issues with but I don't know how efficient this methods will be and also if this will actually upset some players that won't like to record themselves and/or be interrupted to complete some verifications during important moments of a session... at the end of the day, IMO, it's better to just play on reputable sites(regulated in your country) with a good security team!

 

[riff_raff312]

I myself only play at poker stars and Replay Poker. Replay is just play chips but Poker Stars is the real stuff and i have had no problems with this site,I've had as much as $2150.00 in winnings and have been busted out twice ATM i am up $463.00. So with that said i am happy with this site,i think that they have all the security in place and are well prepared for the future of online poker and what it may or may not bring.

 

[MishkaZL]

It is obvious that poker sites should invest money and improve, in the context of security, their software, so that the software itself directly detects and blocks the work of fraudsters. IT security should probably be a priority area at the moment.

 

[thejuice1]

simple answer.... nothing.... its been happening for many years, and will continue for many years. if you decide to put real money online and play against people you dont know, from countries all over the world, in todays day and age with todays technology, there is going to be cheating going on. if the online poker rooms up their games and do a great great job, and claim to have bulletproof security, theyll still be the ocassional chink in the armor.

 

[Risto234]

Only insecure rooms dont have a single cardchat game so guess answer to that ^ is quite obvious

 

[R.Holynskyi]

Poker sites must work to protect the data of their customers, that is, so that personal, private information does not go beyond the boundaries of the company. Obviously, work should be done to improve the qualifications of the company's employees to prevent information leakage, and of course, money should be invested in special software to detect unscrupulous players, fraudsters and various software spies.

 

[Aballinamion]

There has been a lot of news around bots and cheating in online poker again. Does this make you question the integrity of the sites you that you choose to play? What can poker sites do to make you feel secure in playing there?

I heard a lot about rigged games and bots playing poker. Usually those comments arise of players that never played more than 500 K hands: some players cannot accept the fact that we all lose, no matter how good, no matter how equity we had on the turn and they turn to look for irrational excuses to try to prove that the game is rigged or full of bots.
Well, bots are possible but if they exist they are just programed players to react to the way we play. If we are playing correctly it doesn't matter if it is a bot or a human being, we are going to do the best move regardless of results.

 

[fundiver199]

Well, bots are possible but if they exist they are just programed players to react to the way we play. If we are playing correctly it doesn't matter if it is a bot or a human being, we are going to do the best move regardless of results.

It does matter in the sense, that its unfair competition. The bot never gets tired or tilted, and it has essentially unlimited computing power. So if nothing else bots will tend to drag money out of the player pool, which is then not there for honest players to win. But with that being said there is a tendency for people to not want to take responsibility for their gambling losses. And bots are then one of the external factors, they can refer to, just like rigged sites. So the issue probably gets a disproportionately large amount of attention compared to, how common the use of bots actually is.

 

[Poker Orifice]

I'd like to play only vs validated human users. Call it the "blood-red tick".
At least then I can play against non-validated humans as if they are bots.
You can trick/beat bots when you know they're a bot....but it isn't easy to tell.
we used to be able to determine this by encouraging chat. Previously, bots never engaged in chat. Now if bots are integrated wiuth CHAT GPT, then using this method (of chatting) to identify bots will be lost.

In the end, I'm playing fewer games online and depositing less cash across sites as the scourge of the bot continues to grow. We have zero visibility of what sites are actually doing to prevent this. From their point of view, if the presence of bots isn't actively driving down player niumbers, they probably won't be investing much time, effort or money into eradicating the problem.
I fear that this has already gone too far, and once regular players wake up to this fact, there will be a mass exodus from the current poker sites.

It's high time that the sites started telling us about what they're doing.

Cheers,
JT

So as long as you know they are BOTS, you're able to play vs. them as if they were bots. Does this mean you can beat them when you know they're bots? How? (why not apply same approach to non-bots?)

 

[Poker Orifice]

online poker is a scam . i am sorry to admit it . i know winners will defend the poker room , fish must remain in the poker ecosystem , in the tank . i know some people get paid by a poker room , directly or indirectly . why should i pay attention to their comments ??

Well... if they're winning perhaps they can provide you with some knowledge/wisdom that you could use to your benefit in an effort to also become a winning player.
Or.... not.

 

[Aballinamion]

It does matter in the sense, that its unfair competition. The bot never gets tired or tilted, and it has essentially unlimited computing power. So if nothing else bots will tend to drag money out of the player pool, which is then not there for honest players to win. But with that being said there is a tendency for people to not want to take responsibility for their gambling losses. And bots are then one of the external factors, they can refer to, just like rigged sites. So the issue probably gets a disproportionately large amount of attention compared to, how common the use of bots actually is.

Interesting point. But the fact is that we should not allow ourselves to play poker tired or tilted, in other words, we must play cold as a robot.

 

[fundiver199]

Interesting point. But the fact is that we should not allow ourselves to play poker tired or tilted, in other words, we must play cold as a robot.

Sure. But that still does not make it fair, that someone can play maybe 50.000 hands per day across multible sites by using software, which does all the work for them. When we play online poker, we are supposed to play against other humans and not a computer program. So of course sites should do their best to find and ban these cheaters.

 

[HeshamTwix]

Transparency, encryption, fairness, and strong customer support.

 

[Lena M]

Poker sites must allocate funds for the effective work of divisions, cyber security specialists, in addition, funds must be allocated for specialized equipment, IT systems and programs.

 

[eetenor]

Personally I think, the recent discussion about bots on ACR is much ado about nothing. Its a continuation of a discussion, which began all the way back in 2019, and to me it seems more like a conspiracy theory than anything else. The recent superuser scandal on GG Poker is more worrying. Using illegal software can never make anyone play better than perfect GTO. So if you are a good player yourself, there is a limit to, how much can lose to such opponents.

However having information about other players hole cards or as in the GG scandal your own equity before showdown with action still to come, is a whole different ballgame. As we saw in the POTRIPPER and Mike Postle cases, people with such information can have a massive winrate. So this is a real problem. But because GG Poker had such a security leak, does not mean, other sites have it as well. And hopefully GG Poker fixed their problem now.

What makes me feel the most safe is transparancy. Sites that allow the use of HUDs, show a players location (country) and allow independant tracking sites like Sharkscope to do their job. This is the best protection against cheating, we can get as players. And of course playing on reputable sites with a good security team. For me PokerStars check all these boxes, so I would rate it as the safest site currently available.

Bots are not about the strong players beating them--bots are about taking the place of real life players and therefore acting like a second rake on the table. Bots take chips from break even players and losing players that you would normally get---bots skim your win rate- 2 bots in a six handed game means there can only be 3 high EV targets for us at any time instead of 5. That is a huge loss in potential EV- add in 1 other reg and we have a terrible table to be playing on-- long term.

 

[fundiver199]

Bots are not about the strong players beating them--bots are about taking the place of real life players and therefore acting like a second rake on the table. Bots take chips from break even players and losing players that you would normally get---bots skim your win rate- 2 bots in a six handed game means there can only be 3 high EV targets for us at any time instead of 5. That is a huge loss in potential EV- add in 1 other reg and we have a terrible table to be playing on-- long term.

True. But I would still much rather have a bot at my table now and then than a superuser. And I dont think, bots make up 33% of volume in online poker. Maybe they make up 1% or less. And thats why I am not really worried about them, when I play

 

[lilu80]

Poker rooms use various methods to check whether a player is a bot or whether he is actually playing. One of them is that each player clicks and makes decisions differently and moves the cursor in a different way. They call it "computer mouse movements." It`s like a fingerprint and each player has his own digital fingerprint. An additional verification whether the player is not a bot is that if the game is perfectly reproduced mathematically and without any mathematical errors, then it can be said that it is a bot, because the bot doesn't make mistakes. The bot also doesn't have a digital fingerprint. All this allows you to create a percentage accuracy model that the player is not cheating and it is not a bot. I think that poker rooms should show the fingerprint percentage for each player. Thanks to this, during the game, each player, seeing that the indicator deviates from the norm, could report such incidents on an ongoing basis and each player would, in a way, verify whether another player is not cheating and isn;t a bot. I think that the publication of such a fingerprint indicator for each player would allow us to immediately determine that the game is fair. Currently, poker rooms verify such players randomly or when other player report this, which doesn't allow for ongoing combating of all types of unfair player practices.

 

[Popescu97]

Personally about 4 years ago on pokerstars I played with bots at medium stakes on cash, that day the bots were only from Russia,plays very quick,fold same and doesn't say nothing,this is the typology.
Now I don't think bots are in poker, but everything is possible when the casinos want to maximize their profits,it's hard to demonstrate their have bots now

 

[19aleks57]

All poker sites are charged with making a profit, only some are more decent than others, who are constantly looking for reasons to suspend an account that has money in its account.

 

[userX]

Poker sites deal with personal data of players, with their documents, including bank and with their money, so security should be in the first place. I think the biggest priority should be financial investments in various kinds of software that will strengthen the security of individual data, safely store financial funds, and in addition will work as an anti-scam algorithm.

 

[ZenonBR]

Recently there have been cases of manipulation on websites, raising the alarm bells for everyone.

Regarding PS specifically, after deciding to end freerolls with the explanation that this does not generate any return for the site, the real financial interest of the platform seems to be clear.

I don't feel that safe on online poker sites.

I believe that the possibility of manipulation exists and to become a safe environment it would need supervision from government companies that are honest, to inspect this software and RNG system on a periodic basis.

And finally, have a website so that this information can be accessed, proving its security.

 

[Rost]

I think it is necessary to invest money in new technologies, software, security systems, qualified personnel and various services to ensure the step-by-step control of compliance with the relevant standards and conditions.

 

[psy0nyd3]

There has been a lot of news around bots and cheating in online poker again. Does this make you question the integrity of the sites you that you choose to play? What can poker sites do to make you feel secure in playing there?

A few years ago ACR banned a bunch of bots and refunded money to players that were affected by them, and I felt a lot more secure playing in their room for a while. I feel like they haven't made any similar moves in quite some time, which is discouraging...