Are poker apps rigged?
Bots, farms, superuser, team play. A huge amount of news in just 2 weeks from the beginning of the New Year. Let’s break it down.
On January 4, Lucas Baliza published a post on his social networks, in which he says that bots are running on some sites.
To confirm this, he attached a video. On it, we can see an office with operators, each of whom monitors the bots. On the captured segment we see 10 operators, each with 20 tables. It turns out that only one room of such an office monitors 200 bots at once. The scale of such a farm makes you dizzy. But every minute hundreds and thousands of people lose their money thanks to these farms.
On March 1, TylerRM posted a post in which he tells and shows that bot farms on the Winning Poker Network have won a total of over $10,000,000.
Online poker bots and collusion ring 😬 pic.twitter.com/CUCegmegge
— Charlie Carrel (@Charlie_Carrel) January 5, 2024
“The poker bot development” challenge
In response to Tyler, ACR Poker offered a challenge with a $100,000 reward. The challenge was to create a bot that could stealthily play 5,000 hands on the ACR platform. MoneyMaker promised $100,000 and a job at their company to the person who could do it.
On the face of it, a good suggestion. The developers went out of their way to help people, with the purpose of solving the problem, arranged a good challenge. But what can it lead to?
And it led to the fact that now dozens or hundreds of programmers, who were not interested in this topic before, will start making poker bots. Some for the sake of winning, some will just be interested in making a bot for themselves, and for some it’s a real challenge: “will I be able to bypass their security system?”
Of course, you can’t ignore the fact that someone who has succeeded in making such a bot will want to give it to ACR. After all, with such a poker bot you can make much more money than $100,000.
Twelve hours after this trial began, a man showed up claiming to have created a bot. Next, they began discussing the details of testing this bot. After all, it’s hard to confirm that 5000 hands were really played by a bot. But then a very funny story happened.
The creator of the bot started contacting security. While playing with this bot, he shared information about his bot, and in response – his bot was blocked. And he never managed to play the 5,000 hands required to win the challenge. It’s a strange story.
In the end, after an extremely negative public reaction, ACR ended their challenge. They apologized to their users, admitting that it was a bad idea.
This incident has raised an important question about the safety and integrity of online poker. And other similar stories began to emerge.
Is online poker fair?
I will give you some advices about this topic in “fast answer-question” format.
Q: Can I realize I’m playing against a bot?
A: Sure, but in order to do so, you need to know exactly how the poker bot plays, its characteristics. If you study the published cases, it will be quite realistic to identify patterns during the game. And if the poker bot playing against you – a fresh development, then, during the game will be very difficult to understand what is actually happening.
Q: In which game formats are bots most common? At what limits?
A: Using the WPN Poker site as an example, it’s almost the same.
Q: What should I do if I see a bot?
A: At first, we need to discuss the situation with another player. It often happens that players mistake other players for bots when they are emotional. If your suspicions coincide with the suspicions of other players, you should immediately send a complaint to the support team.
Q: Which site has the best security service?
A: Many, frankly, work well. The situation with WPN is unclear – their team refuses to check anything and has been ignoring the bot farm for years. Most poker rooms are quick to respond to player feedback and find out the reasons for complaints.
When playing at PokerStars, the security service appears to work seamlessly. This is my personal experience. I have never encountered any suspicious situations there. I can’t speak for all the sites, but most of them respond to complaints quickly and adequately.
Q: What should I do if I just want to play poker and not run into scammers using poker bots?
A: The best option for hosting a poker game is a home atmosphere with friends with low limit and stakes. In such a game you can have a good time without the risk of being left with empty pockets and ‘burnt’ nerves. Yes, of course, you will not win huge sums of money, but the pluses are much more.
Poker is supposed to be live. You can study your opponents, how they behave in certain situations. And from facial expressions and gesticulations you can deduce what a person wants to do. This is an integral part of the game, which, in general, makes poker – poker.
Concluding, answering the main question
Are poker apps rigged? Definitely not. Scammers are people who look for weaknesses in a defense and try to make real money from it.
Yes, there are a lot of bots playing in most small poker rooms, but no one is forcing you to play there. You can always choose a poker room with a good security system, such as PokerStars.
The poker sites themselves do not cheat people, and quietly let you withdraw money, without any problems. For the site is much more profitable to have a good reputation and thousands of online players, rather than cheat a couple of hundred people for money, and this is the end of the career.
Play poker online, or not – it’s up to you. Whether to use a poker bot is up to you. Do, as your conscience will allow you to do it.
I wish you easy wins!