http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.phpCat=0&Number=10298242&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1
Though if you are here, that must mean you want the short version. Here it is.
To give a very brief summary of what happened.
A poster by the name of SuckitTrebek (He will be known as Trebeck henceforth) posted on 2+2 about how he had found players with nearly identical stats. He goes on to say how he was able to adjust his play to take advantage of theses players for weeks. He then realized he may be playing bots and reported them to FullTilt(hereafter known as FT). FT then emailed Trebek that the situation was being looked into. Nearly, 3 months later FT emailed Trebek that the situation was resolved. Trebek noticed the bots were gone and everything was good at FT... Until.......
The players in question reappeared on FT. This of course infuriated Trebek and he posted on 2+2. This post naturally lit a firestorm of controversy involving numerous members of 2+2, and the accusers themselves as well as representatives from 2+2.
Also in my remarks to some earlier quotes, I talk about people that are not mentioned until later.So here is a short cliff note of some major people
SuckitTrebek: He is the OP or original poster. I call him Trebeck to shorten things.
BrandonJosephy47: He is 0_drunkenboxer one of the supsected bots but he does not admit this until very late in the the thread.
nlnut: Is Charles Kuruzovich though many people call him Chuck. He is the house were the people playing these accounts get together.
nation: Is a mod and respected member of 2+2, who knows Chuck personally.
Here is the link from 2+2 . I ask that unless you have something important to say please don't add to the thread. I think it only hurts both sides of the case.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.phpCat=0&Number=10298242&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1
Now, what I am going to do is a daunting task. I will be posting all relative quotes in here as best I can. To shed some light on everyone involved.
The beginnng of people posts are bolded.
The posts and quotes are normal font.
My opinions are italic.
The first post by Trebeck in itself is most daunting: Also of small note is the time of the first post 05/09/07 03:40 AM
I discovered NL bots on Full Tilt earlier this year and reported them. Full Tilt investigated them for many weeks and asked me to refrain from posting about them until the investigation was complete. Please note the many weeks it took, as many people are upset that it took FT weeks where these guy were by their own estimates making $100's of dollars daily.
At the end of March, the bots disappeared, almost assuredly having had their accounts frozen. A week ago, Full Tilt emailed me that their investigation had been concluded, thanked me for my help, but refused to provide any details about the bots or the investigation. This was backed up by all three parties Trebeck, nlnut, and FT.
Before I had a chance to make this post, the situation took an absurd new twist. The bot accounts have now begun playing again, presumably having been cleared by Full Tilt???I apologize in advance for how insanely long this post is going to be. But because this thread will affect most people’s perception of the threat of bots and of Full Tilt, I’m going to make it pretty detailed.I’ll start off with a picture.
- By the way this is a clickable thumbnail.Here are the stats of four $200NL players on Full Tilt These aren't just NL bots, but WINNING DEEPSTACK NL bots. For those that don't understand, most people had long believed that A)Bots were primarily in LHE(Limit Hold Em) and B) Would have trouble with NL especially deepstack (Because playing shortstacked is by far easier than deepstack).
The threat that everyone assumed was a few years away is already here.In January, I decided to make the switch from limit to NL. I took a few weeks off from poker, but I setup my computer to datamine the 1/2 NL tables on Full Tilt during this time. One day, I decided to observe a few tables with the datamined pahud stats showing so that I could get a sense of new ranges for various stats in NL. I was taking a look at a player with setmining-type stats. He played 14/7 preflop, but played very tight postflop. Then I glanced at other tables and noticed his 14/7 preflop and tight postflop stats at each table. But wait, at one of the tables the screenname was different. At first, I assumed the setminer had probably just gotten up, and the stats hadn’t updated yet. Then I noticed that the second screenname had the same stats at other tables too. Holy [censored] [censored]!!!At this point, I’m thinking these guys are likely bots, but several of the stats could be coincidences. So, I took a screen print of the entire pahud list of stats (like above) for one villain and put it up next to the same print screen for the other villain. Oh my god, every single one is almost the exact same!!! These guys are definitely bots. I just sat back in my chair stunned, watching them for a while, trying to absorb the significance of what I was watching. Jesus, this was at NL even. It’s one thing to talk about bots, but it’s quite sobering to actually see them playing in front of you. FWIW, the time elapsed from when I opened the tables to when I placed the bots’ stats side by side was about ten minutes. I say this not to brag but to show how ridiculous it was that Full Tilt didn’t catch them on their own with access to all hh's (and I wasn't even looking for bots). After a while, I started wondering how many other bots there were. I looked through both the other 1/2 tables and my database for more possible bots. I found a bunch of other players with similarish tight tag stats and finally decided just to take a screen print of the stats for every player who was around 14/7 preflop (probably 15-20 players). I lined all the screen prints up and noticed there was a third player with the same precise stats as the first two bots. The other dozen or so players had many similar stats with the three main bots, but there were major differences in one stat or another. I put them in a list of “Maybe, but probably not bots” and started focusing on the players 1ForTheThumb, Full_Tilting, and Mariojr. Now, I want you to take this into account. He basically found 20 players who playing a tight form of poker. Yet, only three had identical stats.
Over the next couple days, I started playing again and would observe the bots’ tendencies.-First thing I noticed is simply how much they play. They played non-stop for several hours almost every day. They put in more hands than anyone else at 1/2. They are probably some of the highest volume players on the site at any game at any stakes.-Next, I noticed that the three bots never ever ever ever sat at the same table. For players that play so often, this would obviously be highly unlikely even over short periods of time. I play three or four tables for 3-5 hours a day. I play the same people all the time.
Yet, they played every day for months without sitting at the same tables.-All three accounts would sit down and get up at the same times.-Their betsizing was the same. They would virtually always make a pf raise to the size of the pot, reraise to 3x the original raise, and always make a continuation bet of around 75% of the pot (regardless of the number of players or the flop texture).-The bots would “think” excessively long times to make every single decision, even trivial ones. One hand: bot limps utg, fish minraises, six calls, back around to bot who takes 15 seconds before finally deciding to call getting like a million to one. This is not unheard of for multi tablers (or MT from now on) Yet, with many MT once they start a hand they act much faster as their attention is drawn to the action.
Also, they would cbet almost every single flop yet they would still think for 10-15 seconds before they made the cbet, every single time.-Occasionally, the timing went the other way. In one hand, I flopped TPNK HU against one of the bots. I c/c bets from the bot on flop and turn. On the river, I made an absurd blocking bet of $5 into a $60 pot just to see how the bot would react. The bot insta insta insta folds. The micro-second I clicked bet, the bot folded. Even if they had nothing, a person would still have to think for half a second to consider whether they should bluffraise my silly looking bet. This is very weird. Even if the suspected player was caght with his hand in the cookie jar. Folding to a $5 bet quickly is just silly. It says " I bluffed and or missed." Not a typical play at all. Though some people have said it was just a slip up from MT.
After that hand I decided there wasn’t the slightest doubt, I was definitely playing against a computer.-They never chatted (in the first several days I watched). This would change.Up to this point, I had been fooling around with trying to exploit their tendencies but with little luck. After all, they played tight and would often have a pretty good hand. Finally I decided that before I turned them in, I was going to spend an entire night trying to exploit them every single hand no matter how much money I lost. No one else knows they’re bots yet, and if I could figure out a good strategy I might be able to make some decent money first.My grand strategy was to get position on them on every table, cold call pf with any two cards if they raised, then raise the flop or float depending on the board texture. They were very crudely designed (they didn’t even consider the number of opponents or board texture for cbets), so I figured they’ll probably need a fairly exact hand value to stack off with, such as >=TPTK. If they called my flop raise or fired a second bullet, I’d give up. Otherwise I was going to make a play at every single pot they were involved in and see what happened. I mean if I can’t beat a bot, I must really suck at poker right?So, that’s what I did. And it worked. Bot opens, I cc with 93o, flop comes Q52, bet, raise, fold. Bot opens, I cc with J6o, flop comes 922, bet, call, turn 3, check, bet, fold.Hand after hand. Bot opens, I cc, cbet, raise, fold. At a different table, cbet, raise, fold. Again two minutes later, cbet, raise, fold. Again and again. (Granted sometimes he would have too much hand to fold, but overall it’s working quite well.)I proceed to use my expert strategy for 3 hours, playing 20-30 hands specifically against the bots without them adjusting. I even started doing goofy stuff like bot opens, I minreraise, bot calls. I cbet 1/3 of the pot, bot folds. Next orbit, bot opens, I minreraise, bot folds. I’m going to be rich.After a few hours had passed, a hand comes up where bot cbets, I raise, bot reraises, I fold. Didn’t think too much of it, the bots’ are going to have a hand sometimes. Then the very next hand I play against a bot, same progression, bot cbets, I raise, bot reraises, I fold. Hmmm. Two big hands in a row.Then next hand that I play against the bots comes down like this. Bot raises pf, I cc (in the hand I happen to have ATs), flop AQ3. Bot cbets, I call. Turn 6. Bot checks (clearly having a pocket pair or giving up). I bet pot hoping it is programmed to make a loose call with Q or pp. Bot checkraises!!!!! WTF??? I’m positive it’s not sophisticated enough to take this line or be adjusting to me. Then, it hit me -- Oh my god I’m not playing the bot anymore!!!!!!!!I just sat there shocked as my timer was running out. The hand now proceeded into one of the more bizarre situations of “levels” thinking. It seemed the bot owner came back to his computer and saw that the last couple dozen hands he played were against me, so he’s now supervising it. He knows I probably have any two cards floating him for the umpteenth time in a row. So, if he thinks I think I’m playing the bot, then he could easily just have an A or even be on a complete rebluff. Then if I think he thinks that, then AT is a giant hand here. Finally I push, he calls with AJo and I lose. AJ??? I’m thinking there’s no way the bot is programmed to take a stackadonk line with TP2K here. I’m now 90% sure the jig is up. It was inevitable the bot owner would catch on, but I thought it might take a few days. In one of the ultimate ironies of the whole situation, I set out to exploit the bots and ended up getting re-exploited by the bot owner (donking off two buyins in the three previous confrontations). Luckily he made it obvious for me. If he had subtly just called my raises and bet later streets or reraised me only every few hands, I might have gone on raising it with 9 high all night before I finally became convinced I wasn’t playing the bots anymore.I immediately stopped making moves against the bots and decided to call it a night shortly after. The next day I sat down to play and noticed that all three bots were playing, one at each of the 1/2 tables. I began loading tables, then I noticed Mariojr got up. Then Full_Tilting sits out and gets up. Same with 1ForTheThumb. Within 60 seconds of my sitting down all three bots simultaneously got up and quit. (IMO, them reacting simultaneously to my logging in is by itself pretty damning evidence against them). This to me is very strange. Why created a bot your are going to be checking every hour? Seems like a waste. Two the three players getting up when Trebeck sits is a little strange too. Granted if it is players couldnt' they adjust to him as they already had? Why did they leave they proved they could beat him?
Ah, I know -- the bots were playing unsupervised and were instructed to watch for my logging in so they wouldn’t get exploited. This same scenario happened many more times in the subsequent weeks. Keep this in mind as this is refuted later by nlnut.
Since it didn’t happen every time, the supervised/unsupervised argument made the most sense to me.I go ahead and start playing anyway. Two hours later all the bots come back and sat down (within minutes of each other). I decide to play normal against them and immediately notice they are playing way differently from the normal bot patterns (not cbetting every flop, check/calling more). Finally, I see the bot chat for the first time, answering some question by another player. Sweet, now I can be 100% sure I’m playing the owner now.That night, on 2/2/07, I sent in an in depth email to Full Tilt reporting the bots. I detailed the bots’ tendencies (as written above), my trying to exploit the bots’ predictability, the fact that the bot owner is aware he’s been spotted by me, and the subsequent “reaction” by the bots upon my logging on. I attached a picture of the three bots’ stats (through however many hands I had at the time) and I also attached a picture of the other dozen or so players’ stats who “might be bots but probably not.” I asked to have a simple reply sent upon receiving my email so I would know it didn’t get lost in the shuffle. I also asked to be notified when the investigation was complete so that I could post it on 2p2 for everyone to know about. I received an email back 45 minutes later from the initial support rep saying that they had received the email and were forwarding it on to their fraud department.So, I waited. Wasn’t sure how long it would take to freeze the bot accounts and investigate any further ones, but I figured it wouldn’t take too long. I was serving them the whole case on a silver platter. Maybe take a few days. Who knows maybe even a week.I waited one day, then two days, five days, a week, ten days. WTF? I figured the picture of the stats by itself would have prompted immediate action. On 2/11/07, I wrote a another email to support and forwarded my previous email. In the email, I ask “it’s been ten days since I sent you concrete proof of bots and I haven’t even gotten a response. What the [censored] are you guys doing????????????” I figured if I didn’t get a response from that, I never would. (I did want to wait if possible until the accounts were frozen so the bot owner couldn’t get his money out fast and more easily set up shop again. If he loses the thousands in the accounts at least that will be something.) I also tried to pm FTPDoug, but his pm box was full.I waited again. A couple days passed, then five days. Finally on 2/17/07, I got a reply from Full Tilt’s fraud department. The investigator thanked me (no less than three times) for informing them of the situations and indicated that the stats “were particularly useful and will definitely be used as this case progresses.” He urged me not to post on 2p2 as it obviously would compromise the active investigation. Cool, it sounds like they’re finally getting everything taken care of. I got an update a few days later on 2/21/07 saying they were still investigating the three main accounts and others, and that it may take some time to complete everything. Nice, it looks like they’re ultimately taking this as seriously as they should be.Since the bots hadn’t been removed yet, I was still playing against them every night on every table. For the first couple weeks following the initial night of trying to exploit them, I treated them like any other tight player. Every once in a while I’d make a move on them if I was already in the hand with them, but I mostly avoided them and just raised their blind every time. I was pretty sure the bot owner was supervising most of the time. From what I could tell he was letting the bots play pf and against other players and then overriding their postflop action when necessary in hands against me. Since he chatted occasionally now, I would constantly say “nh” to him to see if he would reply (indicating he was watching the tables at that time). Eventually, I started picking out one part of the bots’ play I could still exploit. They played very tight in the blinds, in EP, and in MP, but in LP they play semi-lag and squeeze limpers all the time. Looking at one of the bot's position stats, his vpip and pfr in middle position is 14/3 (I can post more pt stats of the bots if anyone wants to see them). In the hijack, his vpip/pfr change all the way to 18/16. In addition, they would always make a large, pot-size raise pf, so it would be four limpers to the bot and he would make it like $12 every time with whatever hand he wasn’t going to fold.So next thing you know, I started reraising out of the blinds and floating again only against this aspect. The bot owner adjusted a little, but not even close to enough. He started getting agitated and would talk smack to me when he won a hand against me. But he didn’t stop squeezing limpers or start calling me down light or rebluffing enough (honestly I don’t think he’s very good at poker, he just lucked into a good winning strategy for the bots.) We end up tangling countless times a night for weeks. While I did end up profiting from these encounters, it was still very –EV to have them at the table. The bots were definitely good enough to beat mediocre players and would stack bad players all the time. I can’t tell you how frustrating it would be watching some 60/25 retard 4bet ai with TPNK and impale himself on the bot’s obvious set. [censored] you bot, that should be my money. [censored] you Full Tilt, why are the bots even still here? At some point, I noticed that I wasn’t seeing 1ForTheThumb around anymore. Keep this in mind for later
Didn’t think too much of it, still seeing the other two constantly. Then one day I noticed a new player named 0_Drunkenboxer who plays 14/7 preflop. I pulled up his full stats and started laughing. Hi bot.In general, I couldn’t believe that Full Tilt hadn’t caught them on their own. It would have been difficult for them to have been more obvious. They evaded whatever screen scraping detection Full Tilt had. Full Tilt didn't notice their table selection. With regards to their playing patterns, seriously an intern looking for bots just with PokerTracker and access to all of the hand histories should have found them on his very first day. What would a bot have had to do get caught???? One day I searched around to see if I found anything on bots and Full Tilt. I was astounded when I see
a post on Full Tilt’s own forum with the title “Oneforthethumb is a bot.”
http://pokerforums.fulltiltpoker.com/online-poker-play20091-0-asc-0.html
Granted his support for the argument wasn’t overwhelming (7 tables, lol), but if he had at any point emailed to support about 1ForTheThumb then it is just awful that they didn’t investigate the account then. (Also, I’m curious myself how long the bots have been playing. That thread is dated 11/20/06. If any 1/2 players see the bot names in their hh’s from earlier than that, please post the date.)So anyways, time drags on regarding their investigation. February ends, most of March passes. I trade emails every once in a while with full tilt’s fraud investigations department. I ask which accounts were found to be bots, if any additional ones were found, what’s going to happen to the money, etc. Basically they just gave vague updates that the case is coming close to conclusion, no ability to confirm or deny anything but indicated I should refrain from tipping off the bot accounts. They can’t say anything until it’s over, but would pass along whatever little info they're able to at that time. I keep thinking wtf???? It’s been over a month since they’ve indicated they’re investigating them and six weeks since I sent the original email. How can it possibly take this long?I end up playing more live poker and not at all online starting sometime at the end of March. However, I left my datamining computer running. I left town for a couple weeks and upon returning I brought up the datamining data. Poof, they’re gone. All three accounts disappeared on 3/27/07. On 4/12/07, I emailed Full Tilt indicating that I still hadn’t heard that the case was over. I noted that I could see the bots got removed, so what’s the story? They replied that the investigation is still ongoing. Uh, what? The accounts have now been frozen for two weeks and they’re still investigating? (I assumed that the bot owner had tried to withdrawal while Full Tilt continued their crazy long investigation, so they had to freeze the accounts while still nailing all the details down.) This has been verified by nlnut who says his accounts were blocked for a month by FT.
They assured me again that they would let me know when it was concluded.By now, it’s the end of April. The seasons have even changed since I reported the bots. I was more perturbed when the bots were still playing, but still how can it just keep going on endlessly. Finally I just decide, screw it, the case is obviously over, I’ll just post everything on 2p2. Why keep waiting?Before I got an opportunity, I received an email on 4/30/07 indicating the case has finally been closed. Well done, a mere 87 days after I first reported the bots. Regardless this is UNACCEPTABLE if a man was taking a casino in BJ one bet an hour from them, from 12 different tables, for 12 hours a day, they would of had that guy explaing to the pit boss on day two!
Full Tilt stated that they can’t give me any info due to their privacy policy, but that over 40 accounts were investigated. Keep this in mind for later
They stated that they couldn’t confirm or deny any action was taken. The email went on vaguely about how shortcomings from this case will be addressed in the future. This to me doesn't make sense, Trebek had told them he felt the poker community should know and that he was going to post on 2+2. Why not be forthcoming about it and why not say we cleared them something nlnut goes on length was said to him
Again, they thanked me for my help in any actions that may or may not have taken place.It’s finally over. Weird that it took so long. Unfortunate that they wouldn’t provide me any details about any other bot accounts that got shut down too. Overall, pretty much what I expected though. Next chance I got, I would at last make the post and bring everyone up to speed on the bots getting removed.I was wholly unprepared for what happened next. On this past Saturday, 5/5/07, I sat down to play a few hands online. I almost fell out of my seat when the first table I open, I see 0_Drunkenboxer sitting there. I open more tables and see Full_Tilting and Mariojr too. Each one sitting at a separate table again, all back to normal. I was completely floored. What?? Why??? But, how?? Am I hallucinating?? Wtfffffffffffffffffffffffdngknoasih;oghbawoisehighawoihesr’vgsperjbh’opej’thodpebroahjgkrnbesdgkjbekjbdrkgbvewersJust seeing the usernames sitting at the tables again made me physically angry. What the [censored] has happened????? Timing-wise, the bot accounts have now returned shortly after Full Tilt said they completed their investigation. Did they possibly clear the accounts???????? After investigating them for months????? Did they somehow take action against the accounts without banning them????? Did they decide there wasn’t enough evidence to kick them off??????? There’s no way they could possibly be allowing bots to play on their site????? WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK??????????????????So I ask you. Please explain to me how any of this could be legitimate. I can’t come up with a scenario that accounts for half the circumstances, much less all of them. If you can’t either, please email support@fulltiltpoker.com with a link to this thread and ask them why they’re allowing bots to play on their site.After a deluge of emails, we can only hope they’ll post a substantive response on the situation or actually remove the bots. (FTPDoug must be reading this thread thinking, “Oh man, how am I going to spin this one? [censored] it, there’s no spinning that picture, we suck. Wait, and then we reopened the accounts?? What?? What?? Hmm, I wonder if Stars is hiring.”)Maybe the bots’ stats are just millions of coincidences. Maybe there is some plausible reason they always sit at different tables. Who knows? But to me, all of this looks pretty [censored] disgusting.
-Trebek
This post in and of itself does not mean bots. Though the stats are amazingly close to each other. The sitting at different tables on purpose, all of this was very weird. The fact that FT did not do presumably do anything, or give at least a decent reason why they 'cleared' them bothered me alot. Though more posts would add fuel to the fire.
One of the first replies is by Phil153 here it is
Full Tilt is listed as a bot safe, detection free site in the instructions on a prominent bot maker's website and has been for a long time. Clearly Full Tilt does not take action and does not care in spite of their claims to the contrary.
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Full Tilt investigated them for many weeks and asked me to refrain from posting about them until the investigation was complete.
End Quote:
Why don't they have a play history? What difference will a couple of weeks make? This sounds like they want to hold off bad publicity for as long as possible.
I asked Phil about the website in an attempt to verify. I got the website and have verified his quote personally. It bascially says that FT does not hassle botters, and that PokerStars only ocassionally deals with botters.
Here is the first post atempting a possible explanation by DWarrior
It's very possible that this is a bot.
However, I've heard of a guy 24-tabling 6max...maybe this is just a sicker dude? It's very improbably, but one dude's 30-tabling SNGs on a 17" monitor, why couldn't another be 40-tabling on multiple monitors. This would also explain the slow reaction times, and the strategy you described, coupled with his HUD stats seems extremely unthinking (my guess is he's c-betting 100% of the time he's up against 1-2 villains, and checks whenever there's more). A lot of players play that way though, even at 6max. This may be a simple of enough explanation.Though this will get refuted by nlnut.
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From what I could tell he was letting the bots play pf and against other players and then overriding their postflop action when necessary in hands against me.
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To extend on this idea, I expect there to be a program by now that would take care of pre-flop strategy, and let the owner take over post-flop. I actually remember my friend considering buying one of these for Party Poker a little over a year ago. The way I understand this you would program a script that says fold 27o all the time, fold 89o, JTo, in EP, never fold AA, KK, AKs, QQ. yadda. If this isn't explicitly wrong it should be.
Post three by jukofyork
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Question: If the owner of the bot can take over for the bot at any time and play for himself, wouldn't that cause deviations in his overall statistics?
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Maybe the bot owner sits and watches them. If he wants to test out his strategy them probably he wouldn't want to take over, but if he sees one of them blatantly getting exploited then perhaps he has no choice (to both save himself $s and cover his tracks). Those stats are from a fairly decent sample, so a few "interventions" might not make so much difference in the long run.
Juk
This to me has been the crutch of they aren't bots. We know that they have been bots for at least four months. I am assuming it takes hours to perfect a bot especially to play NL Deepstack but four months seems a bit excessive. Also of note though is that Trebeck was able to exploit very obvious flaws in the suspected bot game for much longer than it would take for a decent human 1/2 player to catch.
To me the biggest shock to me at least came from a player called Viper930 this is in three posts which are in order.
A) All,
I have personally played with 3 of these guys a ton when I was 12 tabling 200NL FR on FTP a while ago and despite what the OP may treat as "conclusive evidence" these are not bots lol. As for 1forthethumb and mariojr, I've not only played with both of them but have talked to both of them. Unless they're some really elaborate bots capable of making competent table talk aside from playing winning deepstacked NLHE, then your grossly mistaken assumptions could have just cost a couple of ssnl grinders a month or more of frozen account troubles. So you the reader are aware, this man is fairly certain that these guys are just one of the regulars and not bots
B) 1. The stats level out to extremely close numbers because those numbers are EXTREMELY typical of the tag setminers that infest the 200nl full ring games. The fact that the OP has stats filtered to an integer adds to this effect.
2. I did read the whole thread, and I have played with one or more of these players for extended periods on the same table. I'll try to find chat logs where more than 2 of them are talking but not sure how I'd go about doing that.
3. When there are tons of tables to play it's natural to avoid other regs. Anyone with half a brain does this. If you want me to find some HH's with more than one of these "bots" sitting together I'm sure I could manage to do so.
4. Is it not also a huge coincidence that the bot owner returns just as the OP has been utilizing the same tactics to win pots over and over? What does this sound like? Hmm, maybe a player who gives you credit for a few times and then gets sick of it and plays back at you?
I'm not sure if this is one gigantic leveling fest (which would be amazing) but this seems ridiculously silly. Whatever, put your tin hats back on I guess.
At this point, I am, like a lot of posters. I believe there is some serious damning evidence. But it's just not conclusive enough to warrant a confiscating of funds and a permanent ban... Until Viper930 third post...
Upon further investigation, I retract a couple of my statements and agree with the OP a great deal more. I definitely still remember talking with 1forthethumb and mariojr on more than one occasion, but I just checked in my PT database and over 30,000 hands for each of these players, they have never recorded a single pot with each other.
Sorry for ripping on your claims without solid proof to the contrary OP.
I feel sick.
This to me is the most important post in the thread. Viper930 is what everybody expects the suspected botter to be. A 12-tabling semi pro player who grinds hours a day. Even to him, the stats aren't lying, and he actually goes on to APOLOGIZE for hastily jumping to a conclusion. From here on in alot of people minds go from give these guys the benefit of the doubt to leaning towards guilty. This includes yours truly
Now the next post at first was not considered to be very relavant at first. But it adds up to alot later on. By the way this was Brandon's first post on 2+2. (In case some of you are wondering why now it says that Brandon has 50+ it is his current total. Not his number at time of posting)
BrandonJoseph47 or Brandon's first post...
Consider this: A group of friends all play similar styles and play in a room together on the same IP address.That would explain why they never sit at the same tables,for fear of callusion flags.Isn't it possible for them to have a winning strategy,and help each other out? If there were bots on Full Tilt,they would remove them,case closed.I've personally seen them chat plenty,and have chatted with them myself.We should all be able to exploit ANY bot,and the fact that they keep winning makes me think that they aren't. I know I haved asked you to remember alot, but please keep this post in mind. As it becomes VERY important farther along.
Okay here is a quote from Cardcounter0
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Consider this:A group of friends all play similar styles and play in a room together on the same IP address.That would explain why they never sit at the same tables,for fear of callusion flags.Isn't it possible for them to have a winning strategy,and help each other out? If there were bots on Full Tilt,they would remove them,case closed.I've personally seen them chat plenty,and have chatted with them myself.We should all be able to exploit ANY bot,and the fact that they keep winning makes me think that they aren't.
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Not only are there no spaces after punctuation in your sentances,but there is very little logic,or thought in them either.In fact most of your points are quite laughable.These are more than just similar styles,they are indentical.And these pals in their little room never,ever, never play at the same tables.And they never take a shot at 6 max once in a while for kicks.Consider this:They are bots.
At this point people are calling out Brandon as the programmer which he vehemently denies. He alo admits he knows everybod involved, and chats with them regularly. Please keep this in mind. But it seems he doesn't like being called out. He says he is done posting at 05/09/07 01:19 PM
One of the better posts comes in from drtofu66:
"1forthethumb" and "mariojr"??? LOL
Sounds like the work of some CMU geeks (or some other Pittsburgh sports fan(s) ).
For those unfamiliar with Pittsburgh sports lore-- the Steelers had 4 Super Bowl victories/rings until 2006; enough for each finger of the hand but the thumb. From the 1980's to 2006 the Steeler fans' rallying cry was "One for the thumb".
As for "mariojr"-- back in the mid 1990's, someone noticed that 2nd banana Penguins hockey star Jaromir Jagr's first name was an anagram for "Mario Jr."-- as in Mario Lemieux. [Sorry if this is obvious to everyone-- I just figured that not everyone here follows Pittsburgh sports and some might not have caught the connection].
FYI Brandon posts again a full 21 minutes after he said he was done.
After the threads heat up that Brandon may be in on it, and posters are putting the Pittsburgh sports connection together Brandon decideds to post again after he said he would stop, and also of small note is that his tone has changed.
Alright,you know what? F you guys! I'm just a guy who loves poker like the rest of you, and you're no different than the rest of these secret-handshaking forums that isolate someone with a different opinion, and trash them. And you complain about bots?? The irony is sickening. You robots all jump on the "it's cool to be on my fellow forum friends' side" bandwagon! Sorry for having a different point of view. Grow up.
He follows that up with another post
Investigate me all you want. I have one account on FullTilt with 260 dollars in it. I play one or two tables at .10/.25. Good luck,and like I said,isolate the free thinkers. Well, for someone who plays 0.10/0.25 sure spends alot of time watching 1/2 players chat. (See his first post)
RagzMaster who post this
Look at March 15,2006
Staright from ESPN , the Pttsburg Steelers site.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/teams/transactions?team=pit
Team signs free agent Brandon Joe. This of course in relation to Oneforthethumb and Mariojr both being Pittsburgh sport references. I mean seriously how coincidental can thigns be.
Nope nothing fishy going on here.
Brandon of course posts almost an hour after he said he was done. He references the quote above later but laughs it off.
No. This was at Party Poker two years ago. I still keep in touch because he gives me poker advice. That is how I know they aren't bots. Nothing real special other than the reference to PP and two years. OF course later we will find out nlnut and his other alias on ohter sites.
Post from Cardcounter0:
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No. This was at Party Poker two years ago. I still keep in touch because he gives me poker advice. That is how I know they aren't bots.
End Quote:
I thought we were talking about a group of people in a room, not a single "he", at least according to your story. Many people comment of the difference between he and they. Take this for what it's worth. Though you would think a man defending who he considers friends would choose his words more carefully.
Also DMoogle replies on Brandon's latest post
OK first you say "he" then you say "they". So you're admitting that it's one person running multiple accounts? That's against the rules, you know.
Also, you're still taking advice from someone who seems to be beating a 1/2 NL game for a VERY marginal winrate after they've played for TWO YEARS? Damn you need to start finding some better mentors.
Brandon's response
Like I said, keep pressing. I chat with ONE person occasionally on-line. I consider him a friend. Maybe he runs these bots, I don't know. I believe that he doesn't. Once again my OPINION. Sorry for having one.
And finally Brandon says he is done a little over an hour after saying he is done for the first time.
That's enough with the 3rd degree. You folks enjoy yourselves. I was just trying to offer a different opinion. Personally, I couldn't care less either way. Quite a nice poker website you've got going here. I'll go somewhere else now. And like I said, good luck at the tables.
dlk9s replies about Brandon
FWIW, I did an IP search on BrandonJoseph's account and only found that it was in the U.S.
Then I did a "tracert" and while it eventually timed out, the last hop was in Pittsburgh. Also of note another poster Isura said that she did the same thing finding four matches for Pennsylvania from four different programs.
ComplacentMarmot posts this
http://www.pocketfives.com/C18A38DB-A7C3-4040-A8BF-4B33D40D4C9B.aspx
This is Charles Kuruzovich's Pocket Fives page his FT name is full_tilting
Some notes on this, he has 9 different accounts which is werid for someone who will later clame to play exclusively on FT for eight hours a day.
Here is the bio from Charle's page. Please read it two or three times. This is the probably the second most important thing in this whole thing.
I started poker in 1999. My first 6 months was tragic losing $10,000 (8k on a credit card at paradise poker). ((So you created 9 different accounts)) I SUCKED AT POKER!! Knowing I loved the game and wouldn't quit playing I started to hit the books learning the game of NLHE. Sklansky was first, then brunsons book. After that I started to be a break even player. But that was not good enuff, I wanted to be a winning player. I then got a program called pokerstat to analyze my game and plug the leaks. And I did. I then switched over to Pokertracker and am still using that to this day. I started out at limit, and am now playing NLHE. I prefer the small stakes of $1-$2 no limit holdem. However, playing 3-4 tables of this wasnt reaching my expected hourly rate. So i trained myself to manage more tables. I added a table every week or so till i got to where I am at today, which is 10 tables. Just recently I took a friend in to teach him how to play. This friend owed me $1800. He didn't have a job and couldn't pay me back. So I decided to try something with him. I asked him to come over to mt house 5 hours a day to play online poker on a computer beside me while i'm playing (to be continued) Read that last line a few more times.
One last note he is from Pennsylvania ... go figure
zook posts obout how he sees the same thing as Trebeck
I've logged about 30k hands at Full Tilt 1/2 FR and have mined a lot more. My mined database has 20k hands on full_tilting, 25k hands on 1forthethumb and 28k hands on mariojr. Their stats are all virtually identical to what OP posted and like viper posted, they have never entered even a single pot against each other!
I'm e-mailing Full Tilt immediately and looking forward to FTPDoug's or FTPSean's response in this thread.Incredible work OP. I've played thousands of hands with these guys and never suspected.
Post from tobytobey
Nothing like a controversy to bring new members to a site. I came here from FCP where Hoosier posted the link. I think the most damming evidence (other than the near identical stats) is the fact that they sat down/got up at the same time and never played against each other.If they are not bots (and I think they are) the account(s) are obviously being controlled by one person.
I did a google search of full_tilting and found this interesting...... http://fulltiltvirge.blogspot.com/2007/01/ftp-12-figure-i-should-post-hand.html
Regardless....I've already sent FT an email. The thing about this is that this man who plays poker until all hours of the day and playing twelve tables at a time. Still finds time to randomly google his poker name. Not incriminating but a little suspicious.
ChoicestHops pots a suprising little fact
Drunkenboxer is playing right now. The other bots accounts are not. I assume the gig is up and the owner knows of this thread and will lay off for awhile.
Also a few things here no post from Brandon? He posted fairly regularly and he stops. I know he said it was his last post but he said that before. Also three FT 1/2 players alway said these three always played together. All of the sudden oen plays by himself... Rrright. Also Brandon later goes on to admit he is 0_Drunkenboxer
This happens for a litlte bit then ChoicestHops post again
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mariojr is on right now.
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Just as 0_drunkenboxer is leaving tables! I am just going to say something. At this moment if he is not a forum member he might not know about Trebeck's thread. Though the fact that for the first time for the three supected people 0_Drukenboxer is playing by himself. This makes me think he knew. Of course later Brandon will admit to being 0_Drunkenboxer. We also know that Nation, who you are about to read about it definitely knew. Here is the first point for them to post their rebuttal. The second easiest thing would be to get all four accounts rolling at the same time. Have them talkign to multiple people at the same time. Problem solved not bots. Yet neither of these obvious solutions happen. Instead, they KEEP PLAYING POKER. Also note there are many posts around 4:00 that bascially is railbirds explaing the whole situation to the player.
GeterPriffin posts
WOW...GREAT post SUkit..I've played against you before and you stacked me (LOL i only had 10 hands on you and thought you were a maniac/fish..hahah).
I haven't played on FTP ever since the crazy lag but you're right..my stats on Mario, 1forthumb, and fulltilting are very similar as well. Man i hope something can be done. This brings the total of posting dataminers with similiar stats on all players in question to four.
As someone else says a bomb hits at 7:00 05/09/07 when Nation a highly respected member of 2+2 posts.
All,
I know chuck, the owner of full_tilting. I hesitated to write anything on the subject because he didn't want to draw more attention, but you guys are harassing him at the tables, so might as well prove you guys wrong instead of ignoring it.
Chuck is not using any form of a bot. He plays on full_tilting, and his friends play on the other accounts. They come over, play from the same IP address on different computers, and play exactly the same because they chop up all the profits.(This is argued by everybody that is in the group.' They sit next to each other and help each other out with difficult decisions, which is perfectly within the terms and conditions of FTP. Yes, it is congratulations on playing the same exact way for 100,000 hands which is amazing. Seriously, it is amazing. Also to never improve past 1.5BB/100 is amazing after 100,000 hands.
They are hard core grinders. They sit there all day to grind low limits and turn a good profit. Because of some player accusing them of being a bot, their accounts were frozen for the past month and a half, and they lost out on all of that potential profit. However, Full Tilt completely exonerated all accounts associated with full_tilting of any wrong doing.
Again, they're not bots or anything illegal against Full Tilt's terms and conditions. They are simply dedicated grinders who have developed a preflop and postflop style, and never deviate from it unless they have to adjust. They hammer new players and adjust for the regulars.
Now you know why they play so similarly; they play exactly the same. Chuck is a good guy, and to be honest, doesn't even know how to configure his virus protection; This is a key line you will understand more about this later. I had to do it for him. They play next to each other for motivation and chop up profits to reduce variance. Coming in every day, grinding, and sharing in the highs and lows makes it an enjoyable experience for them and is why they're able to grind for so long every day. Nobody ever takes a day off or says maybe we shoudl all play at the same house. Spending 8-12 hours every day makes my wife jealous.It's a couple friends just shooting the shtt and putting a jihad on the 200nl tables.
tl;dr: They're not bots and they are acting within Full Tilt's terms and conditions.
-nation
ps: chuck has requested that his pictures be taken down from this thread, so if one of the Zoo mods could satisfy that request, he'd appreciate it. thanks.
At this post many people including yours truly started to feel like maybe we had judged Chuck and Brandon wrongly. Mayb they were just some good ole boys. If you see my comments my attituted towards Nation changes later on.
Nation's second post on the matter.
BT,
Yes, they have exactly the same stats. They developed a specific way to play preflop, all memorized it, and use it in exactly the same way. This is brought up many times. If you all use the same system. What is the point in playing together and sharing profits. If you are all playing the same?
I'm not sure what you mean by exactly the same time, but that's just not the case. They may take longer than usual because many times they play above 8 tables. But to say that they take the same time is just wrong, not to mention a statement with zero evidence, should I shouldn't even have to defend that. This again is tough to prove without FT adressing it. Basically, Trebeck's word against Nation's. Though Viper930 backs up Trebecks claims as do other posters.
As far as them maybe using bots but lying about it, Chuck is one of my best friends. I have gone over to his house many times while they were grinding. This is a very incriminating line as you will find out. You'll just have to believe me when I say they don't use bots. You can also take Full Tilt's month long analysis.
They don't need to be in the same room, but they play together mostly for motivation and for help during hands when faced with a difficult decision. It's very effective to put in the hands when you grind full ring for a living, and I know this because I grind full ring and my roommate and I used to enjoy sitting next to each other and motivating each other to play more, and more importantly, to play well. You'd be suprised how much tilt was reduced just by having someone to talk to right after. Their accounts disappeared because full tilt froze all their accounts during the whole time. Only in the past few weeks were they unlocked and now they have started to play again.
pyedogg posts once again about post flop stats.
Man I'm really skeptical that unique human players could have such identical stats over 100K+ hands. I mean they're not just identical in the preflop stats, which maybe would be possible with a very strict set of rules and no tilt, but they're also identical in all of the other postflop stats.For example, isn't their c-bet percentage exactly 100% for all 4 users? I don't have access to the image anymore but that's what I remember.
So when Chuck and his buddies raise AdKh in EP and get 4 or 5 callers then they will continuation bet on a flop of 7c6c5c for 75% of the pot in a 5 or 6 way pot? And they will make those c-bets every single time? That is the best fixed strategy that they could come up with? I can understand if they have a C-bet of 100% in heads up or 3-way pots, but in multiway pots too?
Correct me if I'm wrong about my understanding or recollection of these stats. But that sounds like the behaviour of a mediocre bot to me.
Nation then post that he will answer further questions.
KotOD Takes him up on it.
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Nation, how much did this 'team' make per day / week?
(when they're not locked out of their accounts, that is...)
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That is definitely his private info, and I'm not going to post that. Well good job on answering all questions.
Nation posts he will answer more questions after his supper
Viper930 posts again:
When my roommate and I used to 12 table at the same level, we'd unknowingly play a few pots with each other sometimes before we realized that we were at the same table, at which point one of us would leave. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that FOUR guys would avoid each other perfectly with no mistakes even if they were legitimately trying to avoid each other. (esp with tables dying, opening new tables, etc while mass multitabling). Not to call nation out for being a liar or part of the bot ring, but the story doesnt really fit.
Followed shortly by Trebek second major post:
Alright, finally caught up. I knew this thread would explode but to logon to 2p2 again and see 440 new posts in this thread shocked me.
Nation's development is quite interesting. Naturally, I don't believe it, but I'm looking forward to more being posted about it. Seriously Nation, why don't use just introduce his username and have him post?
Regarding the stats, I datamined sporadically. Often I'd have only part of all the 1/2 tables getting recorded (like on weekends). Also, full tilt would have an update or Microsoft would do an automatic update and the datamining would break. Thus, if I had to guess, I would assume the stats I posted are between 1/4 to a 1/3 of all $200nl hands played for that time period. It is definitely not a full record by any means.
For the bots reacting to my login, I wanted to clarify a bit. Some people were posting that the bots avoided my tables. That's not what happened. (I played 10-12 tables, so it's not like they could have avoided me.) Occasionally, when I logged in, all three bots would simultaneously logout. At first when I would sit down at the tables, I'd be surprised that there weren't any bots playing. Over time, I started checking the "Find a Player" immediately upon logging on, seeing they would all be playing, then all disappear as I was sitting down. Also, it's not like this happened all the time, maybe 1 out of every 10 days.
But the fact that it happened it all I thought was pretty damning. There's no reason for humans to do this. One guy could just tell the others, "Trebek's logged on" and they'd know to start watching my play. Last, because it was associated with my logon and not my sitting down at the tables, I believe it was a computer checking it.
I was going to post some further conclusive proof that the four players had to be the same player pf (pictures of their by position stats so that you can see the absurd jump from hj+1 to hj as they change from white haired old nit to crazy lag college kid running over the table). Doesn't look to be needed quite as much since nation acknowledged they're intending to play the exact same way. Maybe I'll post it at some point just so people can determine if a player who is 14/7 and they think is a bot is associated with all of this or not.
Their postflop numbers I believe show that they aren't human. They are approaching the same difficult situations (middle pair, overcards, whatever) against different opponents and coming up with the same decisions. Thousands and thousands of decisions. I wish I could show more stat-type proof of their precise similarity postflop. But because pokertracker does such a bad job of analyzing postflop, I don't know how much further info I'll be able to provide.
They did a laughably poor job adjusting to me. When I started re-exploiting them squeezing limpers, I couldn't believe they didn't tone it down, they kept doing even if I had just reraised them the previous orbit and they folded to my raise. They'd just do it again, I reraise again and they fold again. For that reason, I thought at a minimum preflop had to be on autopilot.
I'll try and think of some more instances that will show that they were making plays that human players wouldn't have done.
-Trebek
Danieln also posts
guess that story is somehwat plausible, but it sounds so contrived to me.
The amount of discipline required to play exactly the same way over thousands and thousands of hands is extraordinary. To expect that not just one person, but mutiple people are doing this and they all happen to be playing from the same IP address is really stretching it IMO.
Are these accounts ever not playing simultaneously? I mean I've played over at a friend's place before and vice versa but this guy seems to be suggesting that the only time they're playing is when they're together. If I was that into poker that I was putting in thousands of hands on a regular basis I think I'd put in some hands from the comfort of my own home on occassion, not just when I was with my friends. If these are indeed bots though it makes sense that they're always playing from the same IP address. If you had mutiple bot accounts why run just one when you can have several playing. Does none of them ever get sick or have other obligations that they might not make it to play that day?
He acknowledges that they're playing every day together and for very long hours, but he tries it to make it sound like just a group of friends "shooting the [censored]" and playing poker. I mean who really does that? Is my [censored] meter just overly sensitive or does anyone else not see multi-tabling over tons of hours every day as a leisurely activity?
Who here has multiple friends that play online poker on the same site you do, at the same time and for long hours like you do, and also at the same stakes you do but you have never played a single hand with them? Anyone? I know I'll sit on the same table of someone I know just to [censored] with them or we'll play occasionally sit at a low limit table and screw around. You know you're not colluding so you don't even think twice about it. If you were using bots though I can see why you'd make a point never to have them play at the same table to help prevent scrutiny. If these truly are a group of friends just having a good time together I'd expect them to act more like friends and maybe donk it up on a micro table or play HU on occassion. If you were a bunch of bots though, what's the point?
Also, who shares profits like that? Swapping out pieces of yourself with others in a tourney or staking someone is one thing, but for a group of people to grind it out in cash games every day and distribute the wins and losses sounds like more BS. That excuse does cover the bases though if it was just a single person swapping money around multiple accounts.
The whole tone of that guy's statement seems like he's trying to justify his "friend's" behavior. He didn't just say "Hey, I know this guy. He's my friend and I can vouch that he isn't a cheater." He instead specifically makes a point of justifying certain behaviors and mentions several times how they all comply with FullTilt's terms and conditions.
Hi, my name is JJProdigy. What's that? Multiple accounts? Ohh no, that was just my elderly grandmother that I'm teaching poker over at my house playing a large buy-in MTT on an account I created for her. . .
DWarrior posts on the other side of the coin.
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lol at people saying that the numbers aren't close enough to be conclusive... they are nearly identical for every stat on every street.
as for the arguers of the 14.24 and 13.67 stats, this could easily be from the RNG dealing one bot AA-TT some small percentage more than the other over the sample. 100k is large but not large enough to smooth out all randomness in the game. These numbers are so close it's not even worth aguing about it...
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My argument was that because they're not identical, it could be 2 (or more, w/e) players just learning the strategy. You can take the evidence both way.
Same goes for not playing on the same tables.
The timing out is actually evidence that it is a human player.
Someone else said "General exploitability until noticed". So...they notice when you exploit them then adjust? Hmm.
The volume of hands played does validate the argument somewhat, but it's inconclusive alone.
EDIT: "pictures of their by position stats so that you can see the absurd jump from hj+1 to hj as they change from white haired old nit to crazy lag college kid running over the table" this seems like standard nit poker.
"If these truly are a group of friends just having a good time together I'd expect them to act more like friends and maybe donk it up on a micro table or play HU on occassion. If you were a bunch of bots though, what's the point?"
But Trebek doesn't datamine micro or HU. Unless I'm missing something here, there's nothing that says this doesn't happen.
"Also, who shares profits like that? Swapping out pieces of yourself with others in a tourney or staking someone is one thing, but for a group of people to grind it out in cash games every day and distribute the wins and losses sounds like more BS."
This could be very possible...why not? Reduce the variance so that you can, indeed, play thousands of hands of breakeven poker and do the same thing over and over without going nuts.
"Who here has multiple friends that play online poker on the same site you do, at the same time and for long hours like you do, and also at the same stakes you do but you have never played a single hand with them? Anyone?"
I can see it happening. I also realize it's rare, and this would be consistent as to why we only have this one documented case of it happening.
You say you sit with your friends just to [censored] with them...but I'm sure real grinders playing hundreds of thousands of hands are over that. I have a friend who plays the same stakes, and I don't look forward to sitting at his tables, and I don't go out of my way to reduce his EV by doing stupid stuff, he probably won't even notice it's happened.
PS: I'm obviously believing everything nation has to say. Sure, we had users who had many posts and register dates of 2+ years (Grimstarr comes to mind, also the numerous transfer scammers), but I think these are exceptions. Also, nation's explanation seems to be consistent with what is happening, whereas the other people seem to tweak facts to fit the description (from above, how does a huge difference between HJ and CO make you a bot?)
Time 9:12 Our first resident BrandonJosephy47, who remember first posted the 'They might be a group of guys", decides to post again. Remember that was his first ever post in 2+2.This is also after he said he was done. What made him come back? Could it of been Nation? Also, while reading this keeping mind that later on Brandon will admit being part of Chuck's crew.
Brandon's post
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You know what's embarrassing? The troll from earlier might end up being right as far as a "team" playing together.
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That's right the "troll" was right! And everyone in here SHOULD be embarrassed. You jump to conclusions based on inaccurate information, and you crucify a guy and even put his picture on here. That is gross. I guess that's what happens when a man says witch,and it's the 1400's. A myriad of apologies to full_tilting would be a nice start. Cheers.. Man, he seems happy ...plus the very next post is by...
Nation
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I get the feeling this is an initial "excuse" cover story that someone floats out when they get caught .
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I'm looking over the other questions now but this one really stood out. Get caught by who???? The OP brought it to FTP's attention and after more than a month of analysis, the accounts were 100% cleared.
All I'm doing here is explaining the situation guys. It's already past FTP taking a stance and whatnot. I'm just proving to you that my friend isn't pulling a fast one.
OurHouse posted a poll (This is correct as of 11:00 P.M. 5/11/2007
Are these accounts...
Users may choose only one (181 total votes)
Bots? Not Bots? A Little Of Both?
81 45% 33 18% 67 37%
Not looking good over 82 percent vote at least some form of wrong doing is going on.
Nation posts again at 9:22
Another thing I want to address: People keep saying they have not played one hand with each other.
One of his biggest concerns that he asked me about was fear that FTP might think they were colluding, because I think he had a few thousand hands of accidental play against each other when they weren't paying attention. I told him that it was such a minute portion of the overall sample size that FTP would not damn him for that; not to mention they did zero colluding and immediately got up when noticed.
I will call him now and tell him to get in here; I just wanted to be the first to defend him so he got a little credibility instead of being laughed at as a new account.
If you guys have further questions for me, I'll be around to answer but I assume Chuck will handle most of them.
Nation keeps posting to questions
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Also, what do you make of "folding to pre-flop min-reraise", insta-folding to river blocking min-bet etc kind of stuff?
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Nation, this is a VERY relevant question....
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Not really. First of all, when you're playing 8+ tables (i 12 table so i know this) and you raise in position with a less than stellar hand, generally if you get 3 bet you're folding. for example, sometimes if I raise in LP with kto, and a tight regular 3 bets me and I'm oop, I'll fold to the minreraise. I just think there are -ev spots to call the minreraise, esp when your initial raise is to 12 or more.
That's just one reason but the main reason is they have a fold to any bet option in the software, and sometimes it's just easier to use that when you're playing a ton of tables.
At this point BrandonJoseph47 posts again
(Note he quotes Trebek's last post. I deleted it to save space)
Ok. First of all you're talking about 1/4 or 1/3 of the hands. Not even half. Secondly, maybe they all take a lunch break, log off to protect winnings, and log back on. Or is it that "SukitTrebek" plays SOOO well that they run and hide when you show up. That makes a TON of sense. Like I said before, FullTilt did an investigation and cleared these guys. What would I know, though, I don't waste my life in these forums like some of you clowns... Yeah, I am a forum lifer because I see that my livelyhood is in jeopardy (no pun intended)
Dr.No888 is the first to post asking for the 'Setup'. Meaning a picture of the computers and chairs that these people use. This of course to dispel the bot or one person playing multiple accounts. Time is 9:36 P.M. Keep this in mind
Nation posts
also, please dont act as if playing 100k hands/month is so ridiculous. I personally have had several 200k hand months grinding full ring. It takes a lot of discipline and you have to put in hours like a regular job, but it's easily doable and possible.
I have been playing more live lately, but during my last few months playing solely online, I was playing 7k hands/day. That's about 8 hours of playing, 12 tabling. So it's not crazy or anything, I know this because I did it.
and Brandon posts again:
Not to mention, with a CB of 97% for ALL accounts I think their post-flop play is more of "bet no matter what hits" than the "difficult decision" you make it out to be. (I'm sure whiffing the flop in a 5-6 way pot makes for the other 3%) Cheers.
At this point both of these guys seem to know everything about the setup. But they can't explalin in any detail in how it works. Why? One clear concise post like Trebeck's is all they needed to do. This to me seemed like covering more than anything.
and Nation posts again.
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Wondering about:
1. Timing of all decisions (folding preflop included)
2. Timing of play between the 3 accounts -- have they ever played at separate times or do they always play at the same time?
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There is absolutely no specific timing or anything; I don't even think they do the "wait 5 seconds before every decision" thing that some people do. I don't know if full tilt keeps those records or if PT does, but I'd love for those stats to be exposed because they make decisions as soon as they're done with the previous table's decision.
They play together a lot, sometimes only 2 accounts, but mostly together. It's like a job to them. The last lien here is very important to me. He mentions only two accounts. Though we are fairly certain 1forthethumb was part of this was he third account, and they 'mostly' play together. I though there are zero HH with them playing together in 1/2.
FINALLY at 9:49 we have nlnut who Nation verifies this is full_tilting or Chuck.
His post:
Nation,
Please confirm to the 2+2 community that I am full_tilting.
I am here to answer questions and defend myself and my friends who are being wrongfully accussed of using bots on FTP. FTP suspended over 35 accounts I had assocaiations with (thru P2P xfers) and they exonerated all 35 of them. Why? Because we are not guilty of using BOTS at ANY time. Preflop, post flop....never
Full_tilting
Now the 35 accounts to me is a little strange. Okay we can name three he suspected bots , and Nation maybe as 1 more and maybe _dave(more on that later).Also Nation later goes on to say his account was never frozen. Who are the other 31? He doesn't chat at all and he isn't a member of any poker forums (which would explain maybe some side betting or perhaps a staking agreement) This mad me wonder. I will probably never know the other 30. Someone made mention of rakeback affiliates though that is tough to verify.
One other thing that has been bothering me. If I was Chuck and you knew let's say you knew at the latest we are going to say 4:00 when his 'buddies' were getting bombarded with railbirds. Why wait until 9:00 to post. You had an account on 2+2, a respected member to vouge for you. Why wait? If it was me I would write a complete and full story as quickly as posibbly. Writing something like this seemeed to be someone saying "I got away with from FT and you guys should not care".. Instead of Hi, yes I MT with a group of guys who come over and we treat this like a job.
Brandon chimes in
They would if a friend was being slandered all over the internet, and wasn't a previous 2+2 forum member. Like I said, I don't waste my life in chat rooms..
Nation then posts:
i dont know who that brandonjoseph guy is for the record. i've only talked to chuck (who's reading the thread and is going to respond soon i think) so it could be one of the other guys. This is a very importatnt thread, Nation also makes another quick post saying nlnut is Chuck.
dp133 posts a bomb
He started this thread http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...rue#Post8430312
Guess who is first to reply...
Welll please go read this thread as it highly important. The first thing to note is Chuck is looking for a mouse clicker. We can assume that he got this, also of note if _dave helped him he would be a person that Chuck transfered too. Yet the most damning evidence to me is Nation being the second person to post. Obviously, CHUCK IS NOT SOMEONE WHO CAN"T CONFIGURE HIS ANTI VIRUS SOFTWARE. He is using scripts, while scripts in themselves are not illegal per se. It does put the we are just guys mulit tabling to rest. You are at least using scripts. Also _dave from here on is very defensive about this group. If I was in his shoes staying out of this would of been a better course.
ianisakson post the obvious question
chuck, i want to know why none of you guys try to improve your game. ie. why do you all play the same style, you're playing break even, if you're all sitting together playing shouldn't there be some serious discussion on how to play hands better?
nlnut's response:
Quote:
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chuck, i want to know why none of you guys try to improve your game. ie. why do you all play the same style, you're playing break even, if you're all sitting together playing shouldn't there be some serious discussion on how to play hands better?
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We play for rakeback and low variance. The system we use provides both of these. it is a low winrate, but it's enough for us. Well, why not at least try some new things every once in awhile. It seems that you only made an adjustment into Trebeck and only after he abused your 'system'. Seems like a human would adjust a lot quicker. Like within two or three days. Especially if Trebeck is MT 8-12 tables. This would seem really easy.
Brandon posts again:
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They would if a friend was being slandered all over the internet, and wasn't a previous 2+2 forum member. Like I said, I don't waste my life in chat rooms..
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Quote:
Dude, you're a tool and doing more harm than good to your friend.
Tuco.
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You're right. Bashing chat room goers in a chat room probably isn't the best idea. I guess you hsve to be a MODERATOR with lots of clout to defend a friend. I'm only alluding to this "wasting of lives" because my chat room experiance is limited to smack-talking kids at Yahoo chess and witch hunts here..
Basically, like a lot of people were thinking Brandon knew more then he was letting on. Also that he is desperately trying to defend himself not just his 'friend' . He either knows Chuck personally, or took advice from him, or watches him play. Though later on, Brandon admits to being 0_Drukenboxer, and nlnut admits to having Brandon come in and try to defend him.
A few posts laters at 10:12 P.M. Nlnut or Chuck drops another bomb
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Ok, I know I'm a low-post person (so, according to a poster early on in this thread, I have no validity) but there also seems to be evidence that the bot owner created a new account on 2p2 to try to divert attention away from himself. Why would an innocent person do that?
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^ This in reference to BrandonJosephy47
That was a friend who plays with me. He created the account once I told him of the thread. I decided not too post until I talked to nation who advised me too come in here and defend myself.
This means everythign Brandon said was an outright LIE. Now, Brandon posted very quickly meaning Chuck knew about this thread shortly after it's inception. So why didn't he post sooo much sooner. Again, if everything is on the up and up. By him posting the complete truth earlier on this probably would of died. Having his friend come on here and lie, lie, and lie some more is just stupid. Why on Earth if you know you and your friends are being questioned by the poker community . Do you log on and play poker instead of defending yourself. CMON!
ianisakson posts in response to nlnut respons to his quesiton
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chuck, i want to know why none of you guys try to improve your game. ie. why do you all play the same style, you're playing break even, if you're all sitting together playing shouldn't there be some serious discussion on how to play hands better?
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Quote:
We play for rakeback and low variance. The system we use provides both of these. it is a low winrate, but it's enough for us.
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yeah, but you guys play so many hands. you should be improving if you play that many hands. only a robot or completely unmotivated person plays the exact same break even system without making their game better than/different than the person sitting next to them. do you guys not have brains? are you only capable of playing a set system of hands a set way?
I have never ever met a player in my life who can grind the same way for 100,000 hands. I have trouble playign the exact same style for each table. Hell today in two hours I had to adjust to a maniac at one table, and a table full of rocks.
nlnut decides to reply to the 'post your setup' posts
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Nlnut -
Could you post a picture of your setup like someone suggested...
Blur faces....etc....
Fwiw, I don't play at FTP, but this whole play as a team etc really doesn't sit right with me...
Vava
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Are you serious...what will that accomplish? FTP concluded the investigation. Not necessary.
Well I agree Chuck it won't prove innocnet or guilt. But cmon you know how to make AHK scripts how long does it take to post a pic of your setup. Remember Drno888 asked to see the setup at 9:36 its now 10:13 you could of had the pic up and done with it by now. Why wait? especially when Mario and Drunkenboxer were playing. A little photoshop by Naiton and we never see their faces? Alot of people are posting for the setup pics.
ackbleh posts the opposited side of the coin
The first thing that crossed my mind after reading the OP was 'these might be bots, but probably not. This certainly isn't conclusive proof'. After reading a good portion of the replies to this post, I'm absolutely astounded that so many people are so quick to agree with the OP's assertions.
Look, there are a lot of people out there that do a lot of things that seem odd or unusual to you and me. I would find it odd to have 6 or 7 accounts in the names of friends, running 3 or 4 accounts at a time on multiple side by side computers, so that I could 20 table 1/2 NL at party... but I know it's been done, as early as a couple years ago. And quite frankly, if someone were doing this, I expect you'd see exactly what you are seeing -- accounts that do not play against each other, show identical type stats, tend not to chat, and are slow to take actions simply because they have 3 or 4 mice (and screens) in front of them. Note if those players ever crossed paths they would get plugged for collusion, and multiple accounts. Sadly if there are no two players in a tournament even if said players never see each other. No player should control two accounts at the same time. EVER.
When the suspected accounts did adjust their play to your attempted exploitation...and fairly quickly, really... that's evidence that supports the presence of a real person playing the accounts. Instead of fairly considering all explainations, you only considered the less likely alternative that the bot programmer was sitting there intently watching all of the games and then instituted some type of manual override, but only in pots that you are in. Seriously, do you think people program bots and then constantly watch them play? Then why do they spend all that effort to program their bots if they're just going to sit there and watch them play anyways? It's far more likely that you have a serious multitabler situation, where either one person is playing on multiple accounts or one person has trained others to play the same basic playstyle with hard and fast preflop betting rules.
This wasn't quickly at all, Trebeck said he was abusing them for two weeks. If a player raises my BB more than three times in a row he is getting noted and watched. Now, yes this would be harder MT but after one player who you see alot is continually beating you almosy thave to adjust immediately or leave. They chose to leave. Which when this guy MT this would be silly as players they couldn't avoid him forever.
And you know what, it could be that this is a bot and the programmer was sitting there watching a new version or something and had a well developed override function, I suppose. But that's hardly the only explaination, and not even close to the most likely explaination in my opinion.
Similar playstyle between different non-competing accounts is no proof of bottery, and I actually think Full Tilt has shown intelligence here in understanding that. Where they may have shortcomings is in not having appropriate tools to identify interaction characteristics of bots. Because the ugly truth is that some people play very rigid, rule-based poker that is very difficult to distinguish from the play of a programmed bot.
Not true, humans TILT, humans get tired, humans are distracted, etc.
The more reliable methods of determining if an account is controlled by a human or a bot involve analysing the method of interface with the application... things like mouse movement and clicks, window focus shifts, etc. These are things where a human being is going to behave by necessity with some natural randomness where mimicing this randomness will be fairly difficult, and often overlooked, by bot programmers.
OP, please don't take this post as a big ball of hate, cause it's not...you're entitled to your opinion obviously... I am just surprised at the lack of dissenting opinions being presented in the forum of a supposedly informed community. Maybe these accounts are controlled by a bot. Probably not, in my opinion. But the information presented here is certainly not a case of proof beyond reasonable doubt, and certainly not enough to close accounts and confiscate funds.
One potential benefit of this thread is that it could bring attention to what sites really need to do to detect bots -- active programming that analyzes the nature and location of button clicks, mouse movement, and general interfacing with the software. Full Tilt pretty clearly does not have this type of technology. I highly doubt anyone else does either, very specifically including Stars... at least not an active basis. It's possible a site may be able to access data on an account after suspicion has already been raised... I doubt most if any sites have this right now, but they should... but I'm fairly confident that none are doing active detection work on all accounts as they play. The sites simply don't have any motivation to get it done.
Another bombshell burts posted by jcg2005
nlnut care to explain what this thread was about? FYT this was linked to a website
(feel free to look but nlnut has deleted his original post)
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.phpCat=0&Number=9742759&page=0&fpart=3&vc=1
I did read the original post the day I first read this. Now, note this is not verifiable but Cardcounter0 post what she remembers and it is very close to what I remember so here it is.
Nlnut posted that his account on FT was banned becasue of fradulent activities. Basically, meaning he did a suspicious money transfer. Now, I don't remember all the details but basically it involved one of his friends playing on his account.
Of note is three things.
1. Why did nlnut feel the need to delete this thread? Because he is innocent? Innocent people don't delete a thread when they have nothing to hide
2. Many of the posters on the first page of this thread seem to agree that nlnut should have his $$$ confiscated.
3. nlnut is continued to play by FT under a different account. WTF I thought they watched the forums.
Nation posts
he literally had no protection on his computer. after the rash of hackings i got on his shtt to put virus protection. he read up a lot on autohotkeys though and educated me on that stuff like where to get scripts, etc. Seriously, Nation he can't install an anti virus software, but he reads up on autohotkey scripts? How long does it take to read an install direction from Symnatec.
nlnut sort of reply to the 'account' thread
Quote:
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nlnut care to explain what this thread was about?
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The thread I created 2 days after my account was suspended...what inside the thread are you questioning? Please be specific. They say things in vauge terms like this alot. Okay nlnut you are being called a botter by the poker community. Please explain to us what part of you transferring money that set us of in your OWN WORDS 'numerous red flags'
Here is Nation's post
Quote:
Things nation's explanation *does* clear:
- Why the accounts are (apparently) from the same location
Things nation's explanation *does not* clear up:
- Why the pre and post-flop statistics are almost identical
- Why the accounts appeared and disappeared at, apprently, the same time
- Why new accounts magically appeared today posting messages in this thread trying to divert attention
And still no response from Full Tilt. I'm sure nation's explanation is the one given to Full Tilt and they accepted it. But why no comment from FTP?
End Quote:
1. they play eactly the same strategy and play as a team on many postflop hands, which is within t&c. you're allowed to have 2 players to a hand.
2. they disappeared at same time bc all accounts were locked and then started up again recently bc all accounts were unlocked at same time.
3. brandonjoseph is one of the guys, i just cleared it up with chuck and brandon. if you read his posts, he was just defending his friend. he has little experience with online message board etiquette and what types of conversation are accepted and encouraged. i was the same way when i started posting. Okay, what? Remember Nation has said that he knew Chuck, installed Chuck's anti virus software, and all in all his good buddy. Yet somehow has never seen Brandon before. Until now, when posters called Nation on his bullshit. Brandon plays with Chuck at a minimum of 40 hours of week, and does not know Nation. Also later Nation will admit he wanted to work a deal with Chuck, we will of course get into more detail on that.
NOSUP4U posts
I wanted to address a couple things that have come up a lot in this thread:
1) People are wondering how a computer can click the buttons, enter data, etc, and saying that maybe its a program telling people what to do, with a human doing the data entry. Over 5 years ago I was using a program called WinRunner to automate testing of websites. This program would see a window, automatically 'learn' where all the buttons and data entry fields were, and allow me to program input and mouse clicks in specific time intervals, etc.
This is absolutely the type of program that is being used. You don't even need to be able to 'see' the buttons. I could program it to just 'click' in a certain space on my screen. So if you set up your tables in the same spots, then there you go, buttons are always in the same place. I could program it to wait for other input to show up on the screen (like the cards) and react certain ways to whatever it saw. This isn't even new technology. No humans are needed for this.
2) You people that are saying the stats are 'similar' and maybe these guys all just play the same style, or that they are all in the same room using the same set of general rules to play ARE JUST CRAZY! There is no way that one individual person could record stats that EXACT over 2 100K hand sessions if they tried. Like, we aren't just talking about vpip and pfr. EVERY stat in pokertracker was identical. Every single one. I'm far from an expert, but my background is engineering and I've done a ton of statistical analysis. That is just too large a sample size for the numbers to be that exact.
PLUS you have to factor in things like tilt that come into play in poker. Are you telling me that even two guy sitting next to each other reading from the same 'playbook' of how to play, could stick to that plan so perfectly that things like tilt would just never take over?
I don't like to rush to judgement on anything, but the stats ALONE are just unbelievable enough to me for 3 people to have so exactly, and then when you factor other things in like they getting up from tables, never playing together, names linked to pittsburg, etc, the evidence seems overwhelming to me.
Just think about this: If you wrote down all these rules of how to play pots, and you and a friend tried to execute them over 100K hands, do you really think you would stick to the script SO perfectly with no other human emotion involved that you could come out with the EXACT same stats? I've played poker before, so I just don't believe that is possible.
Mark
nlnut still not answering posts on the thread about money Xfers its okay becasue he says he is a nice guy
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He does have a lot of posts in the software portion of this site... and has a good knowledge of programming from the looks of it.
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Nation earlier:
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Chuck is a good guy, and to be honest, doesn't even know how to configure his virus protection; I had to do it for him.
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A few of nlnuts' posts would suggest otherwise:
one
two
three By the way these were linked to nlnut posts in the software forum. If you need to see them check the 2+2 forums. Suffice to say, that Chuck is not computer illiterate.
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hmmm
Maybe he doesn't know anything about computers except for how to write and modify autohotkey coding.
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Adjusting a script is as easy as changing the FTCbutton numbers till you find the one that works...something I read in a post by ADDE somewhere. I figured out the correct numbers and posted them to the public. Wasn't I being a nice guy? This is from a guy that Nation said couldn't install his own virus software.
Brandon is still posting...
Nation is right. My chat room etiquette blows big time. Put yourself in my shoes, and your friend is being wrongly accused of something. However, I was out of line, and apologize to those I offended. No hard feelings, and GL at the tables. Cheers.
Your ettiquette is not an issue. You lying and then covering up your lies is. It amazes me that Chuck sent you to represent him.
DWarrior post the numbers again
Quote:
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WTF, I'm rusty on my statistics, but are you going to tell me that a .5% difference in VPIP over 100,000 hands is 3 SD's? [censored], post your math.
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(14%)*(1-14%)/sqrt(100000) = .038% = 1SD
Of course it's higher than that because all 100,000 decisions are not independent identically distributed.
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I think the test statistic formula is .005/sqrt(.14*.86/100000) = 4.6
Assuming independence, and I'm just using a textbook formula for population proportions.
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We just went over this last week at work..
(sigma) = squareroot( (sumation((x-change of x)squared) divided by n-1
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I'm not sure what this refers to.
But can't we also use the Goodness of Fit test for this?
We have 4 suspected bots in the OP's screenshot:
VPIP1: 14376/105366 = 0.136438699
VPIP2: 15840/112514 = 0.14078248
VPIP3: 11683/82577 = 0.141480073
VPIP4: 5721/41414 = 0.138141691
The total VPIP is 47620/341871 = 0.139292306
So if they are indeed botting, the expected hands played of the 4 bots should be:
14676.67
15672.33
11502.34
5768.65
respectively
Throwing it into my calculator for GOF, using 3 degrees of freedom, we get a p-value of .0108, which means there's just over 1% chance that this happened by chance if we assume the 4 players were using a similar strategy.
Basiclaly this means that the actiosn were so precisely alike there is a 1% chance it is happening by chance. Meaning bots or such a precise strategy that no human could possibly maintain over 100K hands.
Nation's reply
i think it's completely possibly to avoid tilt and play exaclty the same when your friends are next to you and have a stake in your results. remember, if one guy plays differently and loses, his friends could get pissed because its partially their money. playing together and sharing results are very conducive to a strict system.
I call BS again here. Even a professional player like Doyle Brunson or hell even recently Grapsfan have bad weeks or even months (He has an article on the frontpage of P5 talking about his recent bad run). Even if these guys are playing the most perfect strategy ever, every player gets cold decked every once in a while.
nlnut cops out of the $ Xfer question
Quote:
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nlnut care to explain what this thread was about?
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The thread I created 2 days after my account was suspended...what inside the thread are you questioning? Please be specific.
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I'm guessing he's wondering why you deleted your initial post in that thread.
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we decided to just let FTP do the investigation...not 2+2. True 2+2 is not doing the investigation but you posted wanting us too look at it. The moment it might come to bite you back in the butt you delete it. Look, we are poker players and you will never find a game again if you can't prove your innoncence to at least some degree.
Suckit Trebek posts on nlnut:
Chuck,
Nice to see you again. I'll start off with this question -- Why do you suck at poker? With very very extensive history between us, why did you let me keep reraising you for weeks without taking a stand?
Also, did Full Tilt completely exonerate your accounts or did they place you on some kind of monitoring or probation?
A picture of your play in pokertracker and pictures of the other three players can make this misunderstanding go away pretty quickly.
-Trebek
Alot of people are asking for his PT stats and he never reveals them. seems pretty simple.
Nation:
One big thing you guys continue to miss is that all players had to send in ID's and utility bills to FTP in the beginning of the investigation.
All accounts were fully exonerated.
So keep that in mind, because all of this discussion is to ease your minds that these accounts don't have bots playing on them. They've already been cleared 100% by FTP, this is for your benefit and whether you believe them or not has no bearing on the fate of their accounts.
Nation makes several posts. This to me at the time seemed weird. Chuck can answer for himself. nation at this point had said he wasn't part of the group. So really why is he still defending them?
Nation posts
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what part of it being a "system" don't you undestand. We created it together, and studied it together. And then we try to give each other advice during our sessions...all of this will create identical numbers...and all of this is allowed by FTP T&C
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Quote:
DOESN'T EXPLAIN POST-FLOP. ANSWER THE [censored] QUESTION ADDRESSED TO YOU EARLIER ON THIS!
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you are absolutely retarded if you don't think it's possible for players playing a limit and level the exact same way to accrue the same stats by working together on postflop decisions, especially when they're playing right next to each other. Except the we all dont' get dealt the same cards.
Brandon posts .... again.. also nlnut posts before this and all he does is quote SuckitTrebek
Bad players go on tilt. When you're multi-tabling 8 or more tables, you CANNOT afford to go on tilt! I'm not sure why that is so unfathomable. You take a bad beat and shake it off. Discipline is one of the most important aspects of poker, and one hand shouldn't rattle you. Yeah tell that to Phil Helmuth, Mike Matusow they obviously NEVER TILT
nlnut gets defensive
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what part of it being a "system" don't you undestand. We created it together, and studied it together. And then we try to give each other advice during our sessions...all of this will create identical numbers...and all of this is allowed by FTP T&C
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Quote:
DOESN'T EXPLAIN POST-FLOP. ANSWER THE [censored] QUESTION ADDRESSED TO YOU EARLIER ON THIS!
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I will not discuss post flop strategy for obvious reasons. You are asking me to tell you how we play. That will never happen
What difference does it make? Your accounts are done. You will never play 'by your system again' Trebek all but told people how to beat your system. A litlte good will goes along way. Hell, Doyle Brunson wrote Super System II, and he still beats people using his 'system'.
Nation. still posting
"Even pro atheletes don't execute 100% of the time."
of course, but we're talking about a huge sample size here. you're not going to see these aberrations when we're talking 300k hands. True but we aren't talking about one person we are talking of four different individuals, playing with different cards, having identical stats.
Primetime32 replies to nlnut
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what part of it being a "system " don't you undestand. We created it together, and studied it together. And then we try to give each other advice during our sessions...all of this will create identical numbers...and all of this is allowed by FTP T&C
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Hoenstly, i was not one of those that immediately thought you were running a bot. But the above statement really bothered me.
If this is a "system" and you have played hundreds of thousands of hands each, using the exact same system, why do you need to be in the same room/area when you are playing? Why the need for "advice." If your play really does remain the same, there should be no need for specific game advice.
Prospace posts:
My friend pointed out to me that it looks like these guys are from Pittsburgh because of there screen names. I can tell you for a fact that I'm tied in to the underground poker world in Pittsburgh. In one of the Rooms I play in I heard a true story from a reliable source that there is a guy in Pittsburgh that a room full of computers and several people playing in 1/2 nl rooms. He pays them by the hour to play for him. He gives them a certain hands to play and not to play. Certain hands (like AA)they are never to fold unless they are three bet. Once they are three bet they signal him and he comes over and makes the decision for the player. This sounded a little fishy and I didn't believe him at first, but he insisted it was true and he told me who the guy was and I didn't know him. I didn't read the whole thread so I'm not sure if this applies. But I think this can explain why there are the same hands being played, AA never folding, etc etc. I did't think anything of it at the time because I was playing live and I'm not sure that's cheating. They don't use a bot but they are coached.
Just some notes on this guy. He has under 20 posts and from Pittsburgh. He explains that this is the truth. This has never been verified by anybody and seems very dubious.
nlnut again just quotes Trebeck latest article, and says he can't talk about post flop because it will give away his 'strategy'.
Cry Me A River posts the infamous River stats. (These get brough up alot)
Quote:
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of course, but we're talking about a huge sample size here. you're not going to see these aberrations when we're talking 300k hands.
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Of course we would. Particularly on later streets where sample size is much smaller.
For example, "Bet River" stats are as follows:
22 (538/2403)
23 (574/2497)
22 (411/1836)
22 (216/961)
If these are actually supposed to be four different guys, those are remarkably similar numbers and over not nearly so many hands. Nobody's play changed because they ran hot, or ran cold, or were playing with LAGs or were playing with rocks. They just played exactly the same.
Oh, and nice job avoiding my other questions.
So I'll ask them again:
1) How many players in this ring?
2) How many accounts?
3) Why did it take so long to adjust to the OP targetting them if they're discussing all these hands in real time?
4) Why do simple decisions take so long? Much longer than it takes real 12-tablers?
I guess Brandon doesn't understand stop.
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I think we need to give the guy a break now that his side has come out. Also, why is it that people arent trusting nation who a ctually knows him?
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Quote:
Because he's a massive 1/2 full ring multitabler who just so happens to be friends with and lives near the guy accused of using a bot. Being extremely defensive doesn't help either.
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The glaring contradictions in this thread are simply amazing! If we join the same tables, we're colluting. If we don't, we're bots. If we try to defend ourselves, it's fishy. If not, it's fishy. Make up your minds! and nobody gets paid by the hour, by the way. Cheers. No, it's because you were defensive, and lied, and then lied to cover up your lies. The hour payment is what prospace says, again Brandon and nlnut say their pool their money together.
Nation decides hes done at 11:59 P.M.
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these idiots are making more than 99% of posters on 2p2 using a rule set so simple that it probably only depends on the strength of their own hand.
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QFT
with that said, i'm done with this thread for tonight. i'm not trying to avoid questions. everything about the situation that's relevant, i've posted in the thread. if my explanation for similar postflop stats isn't good enough, too bad. maybe i just don't understand how to defend the same stats well enough, but they are the same, there's no bots, and thats all there is. i've told you every relevant piece of information possible.
i'm not a liar, if you choose not to trust me, there's nothing i can do. this isn't even my fight. FTP has cleared them of everything, you can choose to rest easy that these aren't bots, or you can worry but it's really not my problem. I make more than 1bb and even more live you putz. Thanks for the insult. Always helps your case.
His stopping last approx 9 min. A few people have called Nation's character and involvement into question. Like I said earlier Nation's first post made me feel sympathy for Chuck. At this point with all the the liess Brandon has said, nlnut refusing to answer questions, and Nation's defensiveness is really hurting their case
Nation's Post
all,
i am not part of chuck's team, and never have been. however, we are part of the same local poker community and over time because very good friends. i value his friendship far more than my 2+2 rep, so i don't mind going out of my way to clear him in this matter.remember that i could have just kept quiet and nothing would have happened, as he's already been cleared by ftp.
and bluffthis, i actually was being sincere when i said you pick apart arguments using logic. however, you do enjoy taking the devil's advocates side a lot. Note he later admits to wanting to do buisiness dealings with Chuck. Please keep this in mind for later
Brandon posts again.
Quote:
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Can people please not post crap like "OMG I KNOW WHAT I"M TALKING ABOUT HERE I"M EXPERT!!!" when they clearly don't? Half the [censored] in this thread is based on a bunch of morons pretending they totally know about bots or statistics or whatever, and it's amazing how easily you guys are swayed.
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I like where your head's at. This has turned into a "believe it or not" argument. All I can say is, FT completely exanerated(sp?) us for any wrong doing. I love poker and wouldn't try to cheat it. I know there will be skeptics, and that's probably a good thing. You can say we suck all you want, but we live comfortably, and enjoy what we do. Just for the record, I really am from Ohio, and HATE all Pittsburgh sports teams! Cheers. Remember the earlier posts about him and the traces to Pennsylvania. This also leads many people to put his as 1forthethumb. That for whatever reason stopped being part of the group and was replaced by 0_drukenboxer. Later on, brandon admits to being 0_drunkenboxer.
Nation again
ironically, a few weeks before his accounts were locked, i swapped 2k with chuck on ftp to take advantage of their $500 bonus that they gave to some players. about 35 accounts were frozen as a result of his p2p xfers; mine was the ONLY account that wasn't frozen during the entire period. this is likely because i've never played from his IP (may have one time for 30 mins, can't remember if it was stars or ftp) and because i've had my account far longer than any of the affected accounts have. Him admitting that he has been to chuck's setup.
dp13368
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nation, it seems from your responses that you are overly eager to defend these guys to the point of suspicion. please ban yourself.
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Ok, I feel I have to say this since nation is claiming to be 100% honest, when in fact he is not.
Well, nation in fact talked about doing this very same thing. If you go through his posts when he was supposed to move into the Hermosa house with cts and others, he said he was moving east (back to PA) to persue "business opportunities."
See these threads:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...mp;Main=8774313
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...mp;Main=8588194
When in fact, he spoke to several MSNLers (myself included) about going back to PA to set up this exact thing (sweating/decision making for 4-6 players who are playing fullring). At the time, "sweatshop" was the term used when he described it and they would all be following "The system" on his yellow notepad.
To paraphrase nation in the first thread. I am persuing business oppurtunity east that will net me more money than I could ever make out west. Well folks it's tough not to guess what this is. We are at 2+2
Nation reply to previous post
Yep, several of my friends wanted to get into Chuck's crew but had no startup money. I had plans to stake them and do this, but never got off the ground. I've played mostly live while back east.
What? You just went form friend to business associate in about 3.5 seconds. You all but have been lying through this then? Also good job on being upfront with this right away. You had to wait until someone called you on it before you admitted it? Cmon.
Trebeck posts again
At a minimum, it would seem that this guy is running some kind of human bot system. Not that he's teaching people how to play and then supervising, but has a computerized bot system that instructs the humans what to do every time.
However, it's undeniable that the story that's been told is an excellent defense for running a bot if caught in that all their actions will come out similarly and it becomes harder to prove 100%.
Anyways, here are the by position stats of the players. The unique signature of the four players I mentioned previously is in the PFR% column. No player in the history of poker has made such a crazy jump between HJ and late MP.
Nichomacheo posts: Also a few people start asking for Nation to be retired as Mod. This seems to divide people.
I'm sorry for re-stating this, but I think its relavent and I didnt see any responses to it.
Why isn't it possible that this is one person playing on many accounts at once? Here's my argument for it:
- His P5 profile stated "I then got a program called pokerstat to analyze my game and plug the leaks. And I did. I then switched over to Pokertracker and am still using that to this day." I see him having one or several large PokerTracker databases that he uses to set the data for a HUD.
- He is good with scripts that enable him to play faster. See his previous posts in other threads to confirm this.
- I argue that the reason all of the data is so similar is that he is playing on all of them. Think about this: Take 400k hands and split them up into four 100k chunks. Won't the data for each of these 100k hands be very similar to each other?
- The reason he might be slow sometimes is because he could be playing 30 tables at once and, although scripts help, he can't be quick on all of them
- The reason for some stupid moves is because he plays a load of tables at once. As someone previously mentioned, if someone 3-bets you preflop and you have junk, sometimes you're just folding without much thought into what the raise size is. Similar reasoning applies to later streets.
The "team" idea is a good excuse so that he can't get in trouble for violating the TOS. But what is more likely, that he plays on multiple IPs/computers at once or that he has a team that follows very specific algorithms for each street?
I do admit there are holes in my theory:
- How does he not sit at the same table? I think its possible that he has a script to open up tables for him too. Opening up tables on a site is hard enough, but even harder when you're playing 30 tables. There might be some central database of what tables are currently open and it makes sure, when opening up new tables, not to open up one that is already set up. This would be easy to do with a few networked computers.
- Psychologically, it seems very difficult to pull of 30 or 40 tabling or whatever. But, that doesnt mean someone can't do it.
- How does the mouse operate?
Cliff notes: Imagine someone sitting in front of four monitors with a HUD on all of them + some software he programmed that lets him quickly act on all the tables. He uses the information from the HUD plus some simple tight strategy to meak out a small profit.
Nation:
Yeah, remember that I'm not in this group...I'm just good friends with Chuck, good enough to know that he's not botting and that he doesn't pay/hour. I don't know what lie you're referring to Bluffthis but I'd like you to point it out so I can laugh at you some more, because you're just a huge nit now. Even if he WAS paying by hour all it does is hurt his credibility, it doesn't prove he was botting. Um, except you posted earlier about how you were going into business with Chuck
MinRaise Post
It is very clear to me that nlnut has some sort of script that gives plays entirely based on the player's hand and the board. He is not botting in the sense that there are most likely active players executing these commands. Whether this is cheating (I believe it is) is up to the masses. It is not hard to imagine him beating a FT investigation if this were the case.
We know he has written autohotkey scripts from previous posts. How much of a stretch would this be? Also, if these were separate people, you would think they would have screwed up at least once and played a hand together. It would be impossible not to.
Let's say for the sake of argument that there is a super detailed "playbook" out there that all of these people are executing. You would think nlnut would be willing to provide some sort of evidence this exists. Just think how detailed it would have to be to product stats that are so close. If I were to play 300k hands based on a system and put them in 3 100k databases, it would still be much further off than this data shows. The fact that neither has brought this up in defense leads me to believe this is not the case. If I am wrong, please provide an alternate explanation.
The worst thing about this is some 2+2 believe this is acceptable! NO, ITS NOT. He is taking money by making the games harder by over fishing (please pardon the pun).
Also by now, nlnut decides to post. Even he seems to want people to accept that he the farm theory is perfecttly ok. Again its not people
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kudos to nlnut for coming on to defend himself. but come on. it's so obvious when someone is tap-dancing around the facts.
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example please?
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i was torn on whether to post in this thread at all. especially since the extent of my knowledge is what the obviously biased OP posted, and your response.
the OP has a lot of damning, cold hard data. the way you have been defending yourself is "full tilt cleared us, what else matters?"
so what i'm saying is, the overall tone of your posts indicates that something shiesty was going on that you've now gotten away with. that was just my reaction from reading all of your posts.
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I guess the shiesty is that we are a team and even though allowed by full tilt..it is considered by some to be unethical. I never considered it to be, but now i see the reasoning why some would think it is...that's why my tone changed. Is this unethical?? who decides??
Cry Me A River posts:
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kudos to nlnut for coming on to defend himself. but come on. it's so obvious when someone is tap-dancing around the facts.
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example please?
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For the third time:
1) How many players in this ring?
2) How many accounts?
3) Why did it take so long to adjust to the OP targetting them if they're discussing all these hands in real time? (as opposed to just following a script, or they're a bot, neither of which would make any adjustments until over-ridden)
4) Why did simple decisions take so long? Much longer than it takes real 12-tablers? (Unless they're just following a script and they have to look up the next move. Or waiting for a program to tell them what to do next. Or that's just how long the bot takes to respond.)
nlnut tries again to respond to the post flop stats
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what part of it being a "system" don't you undestand. We created it together, and studied it together. And then we try to give each other advice during our sessions...all of this will create identical numbers...and all of this is allowed by FTP T&C
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DOESN'T EXPLAIN POST-FLOP. ANSWER THE [censored] QUESTION ADDRESSED TO YOU EARLIER ON THIS!
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I will not discuss post flop strategy for obvious reasons. You are asking me to tell you how we play. That will never happen
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Another nice dodge. I am only asking how you can account for identical post-flop play when the number of total situations is greater by orders of magnitude than just pre-flop ones. Of course it serves your case better not to give an obvious lie and just refuse to answer.
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I would have to discuss the strategy to answer this question. If not please tell me how to answer it otherwise and I will try too.
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oh come on. this post, and your last one quoted here, are the biggest red flags ever. youve had a 2p2 account for over 2 years yet you refuse to talk a tiny bit a strategy that could get everyone off your back if justifiable .. right...
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well how about this... I would like to play 200nl at FTP again and you can use these strategies to expolit me.....sound reasonable??? Sure, because you will be playing not the bots.
Brandon posts again....
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man ....
these guys suck out of the blinds
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yeah, but somehow they are very good in LP
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people at 1/2 FR can't defend their blinds? OMG!
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Explain to me how defending a 2 dollar blind(i.e. calling a raise with K2 offsuit) is +EV? This isn't a tournament. That arguement makes no sense whatsoever.. actually if there are no raises calling an extra $1 in a pot is +EV. Trebeck posted how weird it was to see supposedly human players making folds in the SB without their being a raise.
At this point a few posters, are asking the question "What is so wrong about a group of people playing a strict guidline to squeeze a small profit." Well, nothing except the stats are nearly identical which even if they are sitting right next to each other is impossible. You are going to see bigger fluctuations. Secondly, three posters came on and backed Terbeck's claims. Third, nlnut had his account flagged for suspicious money transfers and then deleted his post. If this is truly just a bunch of gold ole boys playing poker every day together. They need to stop lying about it, and being so defensive when people want some simple answers.
UATrewgaz posts some questions:
A few thoughts
1. Assuming his story is 100% true, isn't this repeated and flagrant violation of the unofficial "1 player to a hand" rule?
Obviously online such a rule is informal and having a friend at your PC for a hand or two every now and then is standard, but this is willful and repeated violation of it? Uh?
2. No NL system can be so precise to account for all scenarios, to the point where 35 people can all memorize and utilize it. NL is way too dynamic.
There are too many factors. The only thing that would make sense is either 1 person watches all hands and makes all key decisiosn OR there is outside software aid.
AKA a bot which just tells the human player what to do
3. The whole story just stinks to high heaven.
We're supposed to believe that a player will sit down and memorize a system to make X amount per hour, but then only take a cut of that himself? After you memorize the "system" why not just leave and go make the full amount, without giving the house it's cut?
nlnut posts again
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Let's say for the sake of argument that there is a super detailed "playbook" out there that all of these people are executing. You would think nlnut would be willing to provide some sort of evidence this exists.
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And how do I do this without giving you the strategy. How can I do this? please advise.
Well your strategy could esily be gathered from Trebeck's first post. We are just asking you to tell us to make sure they match. As someone said your barely break even style of poker is not high on eveyrone's steal list.
Brandon is still posting at 1:22 A.M.
BluffTHIS! you are a joke beyond any equivication. "There is a LIE there somewhere." Right? Please? Your conspiricy theories have no merit whatsoever, and yet you can't help but be a jerk to anyone with a differing point of view. You are well spoken, and a good speller, but you are not as smart as you think you are..Cheers. Actually, Brandon everything you said in your first batch of posts was a lie. You were part of the group, you lied about the stakes you play at FT, etc.
Nation posts:
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the problem is that he shouldn't post his playbook to 2p2
games have a lot of 2p2ers and we can think at a deep enough level to exploit the hell out of a playbook
hell, this thread is already a disaster for them given the street by street and position stats of their playbook
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My point is I'm pretty sure this playbook exists in the form of a computer program. The stats are too close for this not to be the case.
If this is not the case, I would like to hear what the process is for getting several people to play EXACTLY the same game.
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the same way a surgeon learns to operate on very critical/microscopic parts of the human body......teach, practice, teach, practice Yeah, nobody gets tired, nobody gets angry, nobody gets pissed off at another guy, nobodys wife/kids need tending too. Yeah right.
Boquense posts
A couple things that really worry me in no particular order...
1. Nation going out of his way to insinuate that Chuck is a complete novice with computers and as it turns out, this is far from the truth.
2. OP's claim that the 3-4 accounts logged off simultaneously as soon as he signed in to FTP, as opposed to actually sitting at their tables.
3. Overall inconsistencies and evolution of stories. (IE group of friends getting together to play poker and splitting profits----> dude running sweatshop.)
4. Even with a very simple strategy and such a low VPIP, it just really doesn't make sense for these guys to play poker so methodically and equivalently, over countless hundreds of thousands of hands, and only earn 1.5bb/100 at low stakes without desiring to tweak the system in minor ways to improve winrates.
Those are just a couple off the top of my head. I'm not saying the whole sweatshop thing isn't possible, but I guess as a poker player I've trained myself to put stories together, and this just really doesn't add up.
nlnut posts
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nlnut,
Please confirm or deny that there is a computer program/script that is giving plays to the players on these accounts.
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deny.. we verbally help each other out. Remember Trebeck saying he exploited them for weeks before they caught on. Like I said even when I am four tabling,I can tell when someone is continually pushing my blinds.
nation at 1:33 seems to post he's done
i really don't care about this thread anymore, if ftp wants to investigate again so be it, there's just nothing to hide.
nlnut first uses the word sweatshop
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Nicho,
Even if your explanation is true, which doesn't seem likely, nlnut and nation have given a different story. There is a lie in those stories somewhere and that's the point.
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link me too the lie.... i missed it.
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The lie is all of your story not adding up, not accounting for all the stats, and especially for post-flop play. Your explanation simply is unproven and unreasonable for you to be both not botting and not running a sweatshop or playing all those accounts yourself at the same time in some way.
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What is the definition of a sweat shop. I'm sorry but i never used the word before. So if i'm sitting in front of a computer (in the middle) with 2 friends on each side of me and were discussing hands/decisions is that a sweatshop...if so I am guilty. No, lots of people coach other players. The difference is that the coaches money is never involved in the hand. For the upteenth time if it was all this simple. Why not have Nation or Brandon say so 12 hours ago?
Dwarrior posts more numbers
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- I argue that the reason all of the data is so similar is that he is playing on all of them. Think about this: Take 400k hands and split them up into four 100k chunks. Won't the data for each of these 100k hands be very similar to each other?
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But VPIP, which should obviously be identical across the board, is statistically different between the 4 accounts listed.
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How about this: At some time t0, he decided he wanted to adjust something in the strategy. He has four accounts with x1, x2, x3, anx x4 hands each. But say they're all different # of hands. The stats for each of those will be different based on how many hands he played at his strategy before t0 and the number of hands he plays with the new strategy after t0.
Example:
Set1: 110
Set2: 111100
Both have average of .67.
Change strategy to play all hands. Add 1 to each
Set1: 110 1
Set2: 111100 1
Average for 1: 0.75
Average for 2: 0.71
Same strategy, different averages, hmm. Maybe theres is a lesson here?
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A valid point.
However, two of the accounts have basically the same number of hands (105k hands and 112k hands), so we can assume they were datamined at the same time. How come their VPIPs are so significantly different then? (13.64% and 14.08%) That difference is over 4 SDs
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has it been confirmed that the true deviation is over 4SDs? earlier there were like 4 formulas people were trying to use. if true this fact needs much more attention as it has the greatest chance of clearing them
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The reason there were 4 different formulas is because I believe 2 people used wrong ones. Also the two I gave were for slightly different questions.
Here is the test to show that VPIP of 1forthethumb (14376/105366 or 13.64) differs from that of full_tilting(15840/112514 or 14.07):
p1 is VPIP of 1for, p2 is VPIP for full_tilting, p is their combined vpip (weighted average of the two). n1 and n2 are the sample sizes.
(p1-p2)/sqrt( p*(1-p)*(1/n1 + 1/n2) )
This comes out to -2.93, so I overestimated it (the other equation where I got 4 was for a different question). The probability of these results differing by chance is 0.0017.
In case you're wondering, this is Two Sample Hypothesis Test of the difference of two Population Proportions.
Brandon still posting...
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it would not be hard to come up with a way of having the preflop numbers agree - not hard at all.
to one raise, call/raise these exact hands and no others - allowing for certain hands in certain positions
to two raises, call/raise these exact hands and no others
follow these things exactly. how hard is that?
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I just don't think you could get human beings to follow something so precisely, even preflop. Sooner or later, there would be deviations. Also, when you consider how strange some of the reactions were to the OP's actions, it seems strange a human would stick to the script so long when it is obvious he is being exploited.
Presumably, all of the people involved had previous poker experience. Just think how strange it is that none of them seemed to make any elementary adjustments.
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We make money from the tables and rakeback, why adjust? We're not millionaires, but comfortable. Despite what he says, SukitTrebek wasn't floating and destroying me. Or any of my friends. It wasn't some super-glaring issue with him. You're assuming Trebek was killing us, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Well, any poker player wants to improve. Hell even the pros like Daniel N. talk about improving. Trebeck said until the adjust was made he was beating you and for weeks. Its tough to believe Brandon because he lies and then lies again.
Nation evidently not done posting:
because the strategy is so simple it wouldnt work at higher stakes genius. True but a good player who puts in 100,000 hands should theoretically improve.
DMoogle posts an obvious question:
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Nicho,
Even if your explanation is true, which doesn't seem likely, nlnut and nation have given a different story. There is a lie in those stories somewhere and that's the point.
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link me too the lie.... i missed it.
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The lie is all of your story not adding up, not accounting for all the stats, and especially for post-flop play. Your explanation simply is unproven and unreasonable for you to be both not botting and not running a sweatshop or playing all those accounts yourself at the same time in some way.
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What is the definition of a sweat shop. I'm sorry but i never used the word before. So if i'm sitting in front of a computer (in the middle) with 2 friends on each side of me and were discussing hands/decisions is that a sweatshop...if so I am guilty.
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One thing that you have been VERY inconsistent about is that you keep claiming that your group is constantly discussing hands and decisions, but you ALSO claim that you guys DON'T actively try to improve your play and winrate. Why are you discussing the hands then? To laugh off bad beats and bad plays? A group of three players putting in the hours/hands you claim to and constantly discussing hands and decisions should have become EXCELLENT no-limit players by now. However, you've claimed multiple times that you're NOT trying to improve your play and winrate.
This doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me.
Brandon is still posting
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BrandonJoseph,
Which of the players listed are you? In your first post, why did you say that you had chatted with the bot accounts personally?
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I was defending my friend the best way I could KNOWING we don't use bots. By the way, I've played a ton with you (I'm a Jeopardy fan, and liked your name) and you weren't check-raising us to hell and back like you stated in your OP. We both know you were selectively aggresive on raggedy flops. If I get check-raised on a 7 3 2 board with AK, I'm folding. I'm sure most poker players are.. Brandon just quit lying, and no to folding AK. Heads up I am not folding AK in all spots there. Maybe not even three handed. Hell, the other day I called a man down with AK high because he was a maniac.
Nation:
minraise,
have you ever met a guy with a wife and 3 young kids that would rather take the easy grind money over taking chances by moving up and taking shots with his roll? maybe thats why he's fine with grinding 1/2 for good money. Yeah, and this makes sense. But explaing to that wife and kid that hey hunny I am going to spend twelve hours at our friend Chuck's house to play cards. or sorry Johnny I can't go to your baseball game because we all have to play together would be tough.
DMoogle posts the Brandon is lying arguement
OK, so according to Chuck, BrandonJoseph47 is a member of the group, right? That means he was lying...
Here:
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Investigate me all you want. I have one account on FullTilt with 260 dollars in it. I play one or two tables at .10/.25. Good luck,and like I said,isolate the free thinkers.
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Here:
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No. This was at Party Poker two years ago. I still keep in touch because he gives me poker advice. That is how I know they aren't bots.
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I realize this is actually lying, but it's very misleading.
He claims to practically know nothing about Chuck here:
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Like I said, keep pressing. I chat with ONE person occasionally on-line. I consider him a friend. Maybe he runs these bots, I don't know. I believe that he doesn't. Once again my OPINION. Sorry for having one.
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Claims that Chuck is not a 2+2er here:
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They would if a friend was being slandered all over the internet, and wasn't a previous 2+2 forum member. Like I said, I don't waste my life in chat rooms..
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So you'll forgive me for saying that your group doesn't have all that much credibility.
BrandonJoseph posts again on the lying
(Note here is the quote from DMoogle which I removed to save space)
Actually my wife does have a FullTilt account with $260 that she plays those stakes at home. Yes, the other stuff was a lie. That's pretty obvious. I just wanted to defend him while trying to stay anonymous. Now that we all know who I am, it doesn't seem very relivant does it? I was talking about MYSELF not being on the 2+2 forum before today.. Well, Brandon honest people do not lie. Nation is well aware of the ZeeJustin JJ thing and what his posting did to him. So what you say here is very relevant and the need to be truthful was and is of the upmost importance.
Brandon at this point has admitted to lying, all but thrown an little credibility these guys had out the window, and they keep letting him post. Seriously, if I was nlnut and I was 100% innoncent. I would tell my friend to STFU
Listen folks. I've said before, we are not CRUSHING 1/2. But with money from tables and rake back, we are doing quite well. Better than when we started. We are learning, adapting, and adjusting our play at our own pace. For those of you who say we have no desire to improve, that's just plain wrong. You can criticize all you want, but the fact is, it's a fun stress free environment. What could possibly be wrong with that? You seem to be stressing alot about something you needed to lie about in the first place.
Nation comments on people wanting to ban him as Mod
donktastic,
the fact that you think i should be removed as mod just because i'm defending chuck's actions (which are within the t&c) is so LOL. No, Nation the fact that you lied, then tried to pretend like you didn't lie is why you should be removed as Moderator.
Naiton posts again
the only time i've ever played from his IP was when i went over and donked around on one table for a little bit, less than an hour.
I have never been in business with chuck. Uhh thats a lie, you said you wanted to stake your friends into Chuck's operation.
My only purpose in this thread is to prove that chuck used NO bots in his play at any time. Then why not just post his 'We are friends who play a rigid strategy' answer right away.
FTP has cleared him of any wrongdoing. Until you guys starting lying.
I gain nothing from entering this thread to defend him, other than personal satisfaction that I am protecting the integrity of a close friend and good person The only thing you are losing is credibility.
Brandon posts again:
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One thing those "involved" in this situation need to realize is this...
Not everyone on this board is stupid.
In fact quite the opposite. There are lots of VERY intelligent, very logical, very street smart people on this board.
Basically, you aren't dealing with a bunch of drooling, ignorant fools, and people here have very sophisticated BS filters
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Noone said anyone was stupid, in fact, I applauded skepticism. However, there is plenty of ignorance in the fact that people make up their minds despite evidence to the contrary. You forget that FT did a 3 mnth investigation into us, and freed our accounts of any wrongdoing. Conspiricy theorists will never let it go due to what you say most people here lack..ignorance. Now, remember Brandon has admitted he is a part of this group.
Naiton then posts:
it was only 1 month not 3 months... Nation had denied vehemently that he wasn't part of this group, so he feels the need to correct an actual member of this group?
Brandon lies again:
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Can some mod check BrandonJoseph's ip address and verify he's posting from Pennsylvania and not some 12 year old kid in California?
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That's been done Trebek. I am in PA. You started this witch hunt, I figured you read all the threads..I still like your screen name, though.. Remember he said he was from Ohio.
Brandon posts again
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Conspiricy theorists will never let it go due to what you say most people here lack..ignorance.
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Umm Chuck already admitted that we as community have a right to be suspicious given the information we have at hand, now you call us ignorant for suspecting shadiness?
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Not quite. What I said was, people aren't taking everything in, and are sticking to conclusions they made when they read Trebek's OP, despite evidence to the contrary.
Well thats half right. Three other postser including Viper930 have backed up Trebeck's stats on your guys. Viper930 was even defending you until he double checked his stats. Trebeck and the numbers haven't changed. Your story has changed repeatedly.
Nation posts again:
no, i stand by my statement that i have nothing to gain from this. i was never in business with chuck in any way. as i said, some friends of mine wanted to join chucks crew and had no startup money. You posted you played under his IP.
I made plans to stake them myself (not to play with chuck) and did not go through with it.
I have swapped money on poker sites many times with friends; we swapped 2k on stars and ftp so i had money to clear my ftp bonus.
Brandon covers his lies again
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Noone said anyone was stupid, in fact, I applauded skepticism. However, there is plenty of ignorance in the fact that people make up their minds despite evidence to the contrary. You forget that FT did a 3 mnth investigation into us, and freed our accounts of any wrongdoing. Conspiricy theorists will never let it go due to what you say most people here lack..ignorance.
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There's a difference between a finding of "Not Guilty" and actually being innocent. While FTP's reinstatement of your accounts is certainly evidence in your favour, it's hardly overwhelming particularly given the low regard in which FTP's customer service is generally held.
As far as "conspiracy theorists" go, a big part of the mistrust can be laid directly at your (Brandon's) feet due to your posts in this thread.
When you start out by lieing to people, repeatedly, what do you expect? We already know you are a liar, the question is whether or not you're a cheat. The former is not proof of the latter, but it's certainly not a sign of innocence.
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Then it's at my feet. I previously stated that I was trying to anonymously defend my friend. If that can't be overlooked, then I apologize to Chuck for handling the situation wrong. I owe you folks nothing. I have been forthright about why I lied at the beginning, but you will make your own assumptions. Chuck is a great guy, and doesn't deserve to be slandered like this. If he needed to cheat, explain his 165th place finish in the main event. How many of you cashed? Chuck doesn't seem to mind you lying repeatedly. You owe us a full explanatipn, which we will probably never get. An innocent person has zero reason to be anonymous or to lie. If he placed 165th in the WSOP ME he should of definitely been able to beat 1/2 at 1.5BB/100, or maybe he just got lucky in the ME instead?
Nation seems to feel satisfied.
ok so basically everything has got off track and no one actually thinks they're bots anymore? good, i've made my point then. i really don't care if you guys nitpick other points. No not all, a few posters are saying it's possible that three people could pull of these identical stats. While possibly happening, and probably happening are two different things.
Trebeck posts more numbers:
FWIW, here are more detailed postflop stats
BrandonJoseph47 posts again...
No, no relation. My name isn't affilliated with any Pittsburgh teams, despite the theories. I root for Cleveland teams. So um what? Are you from PA, or OH. or what, I can't believe anything you say anymore.
and Brandon posts again...
If I didn't defend myself and my friend, that would be fishy too, according to you folks. Quit contradicting yourselves please. Actually, if you hadn't posted it would of helped your friends greatly.
and Naiton posts
brandon's just kind of fruity that's all Earlier you claimed not to know him at all.
TEIdup4
For those interested, my post in ATF about nation's position as a mod. Pleast share your opinion on the matter, whether you agree with me or not.
My apologies for the slight hijack,and this will be the last mention I make of it here. the link is here
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10313554&an=0&page=0#Post10313554
I only ask if you are not a frequent poster on 2+2 please do not post in this thread. I only put it here to explain that some people see Nation's credibility in jeopardy (again no pun intended). I know many mods in the gaming world and they are held to a very high level of professionalism. One mod on an rpg fan site was kicked for not a direct violation of rules but for arguing with game publishers.
Brandon posts another wonder
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brandon's just kind of fruity that's all
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Lol! Never claimed to be anything but! Thank you Nation, you really speak to me! Need a date? Now, do you guys know each other or what?
at 4:25 A.M. Brandon finally says hes done...
Ok mates, I'm making this my last post of the night. First off, I have no ill will towards ANYONE that doesn't believe us. I don't come here to hate(there ARE a lot of haters). It's good to be skeptical, have differing opinions, etc..I understand the evidence presented by Trebek LOOKS pretty damning. If I wasn't POSITIVE by being there that nobody is botting/cheating it MAY be hard to believe. Appeasing you folks isn't my primary objective. Sticking up for an honest and great person IS. There will always be questions. Did we really land on the moon? Who shot JFK? I urge you folks, however, not to be so quick to judge and think for yourselves. Also, trust that FT is doing their job. They are a very reputable website with nothing to gain by allowing bots to play. I'm confident they'll continue to provide a great/safe place for us play poker-which is all we want to do. In closing, good luck at the tables and like I said, no harm, no foul from ANY of you in my eyes. Free thinking, and differing opinions are what makes the world go round. Peace like hair grease. Cheers.
Okay, its good to be skeptical. Well you didn't help the skeptics by lying. And if you knew the evidence by Trebek is pretty damning. Why come in anonymously and lie. Why not have nlnut or at least Nation introuduce nlnut and tell the truth in one post. Why the defensiveness and different stories. Also note in one of the first posters who said FT did not enforce botting.
tautomer posts a little about his own stats
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I think pretty much everyone by now knows they're not botting, so now it's on to sweatshops. It's basically one far-fetched story vs another.
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And by everyone, you mean 3 of you guys right?
Its been constant lies by everyone involved in the scam. As someone else said, eveyrone with a halfway decent BS meter knows whats up.
Mark
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Sure, I think there is a reasonable chance that "something is up", but that something is very unlikely to be botting. I thought we moved on to sweatshops now.
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Ok, let's get back to the bots then. The only "evidence" against bots is the word of two of full_tilting's buddies. One straight up "lied" to everyone (before the whole poker team story came up) and didn't know it was a 1 month instead of a three month investigation. And one happens to have a bunch of posts and a green name who also seems to know about this than the guy who is supposedly part of the team. Not very convincing, I'll need a bit more.
As far as your statistical analysis goes to disproving the bot theory, you are assuming identical dealt hands distribution for each account. Not to mention hands dealt by position. Full ring preflop strategy is highly dependent upon cards and position. Obviously cards are less important in late position but anyway. For instance, how often have you been dealt KJo on the button? I've gotten it (255/27855) 0.915% of the time. Four off the button I've gotten it (137/17193) 0.797% of the time. What if those percentages were reversed? Would that affect overall VPIP? Probably not very much but I'm certain that it would somewhat. What about QJ, AT, JT, and other highly position dependent hands? Remember, the VPIP is only 14% so there's fairly small range of hands being played, likely following a typical preflop cookbook strategy. Overall I've been dealt KJo 0.915% of the time and 35o 0.856% of the time. What if those numbers were reversed? The differences are tiny on a case by case basis but they can add up, especially when position is taken into account, which it must be. My point is, the "significant" differences in preflop numbers that you found aren't taking into account all of the data. But we don't have all of the data so...bots can't be ruled out. Nothing proven of course, but nothing ruled out.
SpyDog posts what a few people belive is a logical explanation.
1) I believe that there are 3 different people, each having their own account.
2) I believe that they often play in the same location, grinding it away.
3) I also believe that most often they play as bots.
Question for Chuck and brandon:
1) Who has expertise in programming?
Here's my guess as to what happened:
- Chuck starts playing poker and becomes a decent player.
- Chuck has a couple of friends that are good programmers.
- Chuck teaches these guys poker and they begin to discuss a way to program a winning bot.
- Their 'think tank' plays a lot together and develops the bot.
- Sometimes they play 'for real' and sometime they play as bots. This is the perfect cover. A lot of the pieces make sense. Such as the bio of Chuck on P5. The refusal to answer certain parts. Nmamely, the part about the bots.
Another 1/2 player comments on the suspected players.
Bigfoot
I read most of this thread and have played with 2 of those accounts in the past. I suspected something was up with MarioJr and OneForTheThumb after playing with them for a while. They were constantly at the tables during the same times (which hardly ever varied) and both were highly exploitable in similar ways and extremely predictable. I never had the database to put anything more together other than that they were both pretty bad nits.
It's painfully obvious thanks to OPs data, that there is without question some sort of computer program being used. The numbers and play styles are far, far too similar to even be some sort of "playbook" that they've memorized. No 4 humans can consistently do EXACTLY the same thing in every scenario. So many environmental factors would come into play that at many times they would be making mistakes and straying from the "rules".
I'd say its downright impossible for any human, let alone 4 whom happen to be friends, to be that consistent, day in and day out. No one is ever sick? bored? distracted? etc. Also Chuck's analogy of a surgeon is laughably bad. Surgery is similar to poker, but in the sense that it's dynamic and not every situation is a "textbook" example. In the same way a surgeon improvises to an unexpected situation in the OR, a poker play does so during a hand. You simply can't play over a half million hands of poker and then claim you simply refuse to vary your strategy in the face of unexpected situation (ie. folding to a 5$ river bet in a $60 pot) because it isn't part of your "strategy". That's absolutely absurd.
Viper930 posts again
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I'm curious if anyone, especially a massive-multi-tabler, has examined their own stats as a comparison. Ideally, they would play on auto-pilot (bot-like alogrithm?) and have a large sample size at one site.
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fwiw, my stats at 200nlFR a while ago over 2 samples of 20,000 hands or so divver by quite a bit more than the stats between these guys, and I'm one person lol.
These include:
~0.5% difference in VPIP/PFR
~4% difference in Att to Steal Blinds
~1% diff in flop AF
~1% diff in total postflop AF
~2% diff in Won$WSF (pretty insignificant)
again, pretty small sample, but if the same human can have stats that vary more than 4 individual humans from sample to sample, those 4 must be some robotic humans.
Brandon is....back..Grrreat
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none of the bots are playing, as of now. I searched them and they didn't show up on any tables. I did get to play against drunkenboxer yesterday.. lol he had taken manual control over the bot and it was a t o n of fun.
BTW is there a way to edit the initial post so that the image with the stats shows up again? Everyone who gets linked to this may have a tough time finding the post that had the image of the PT stats (which, in my opinion is all the evidence a person needs to see that they are guilty as charged... the numbers don't lie)
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Let's just be glad any of you weren't the deciding members on a jury(or maybe YOU let OJ off!) Drunkenboxer made $600 yesterday, so I KNOW that you didn't have a "ton of fun" playing against me. Just a thought, of course you'd like everyone to believe you crushed me, but that couldn't be further from the truth..toughguy. I'm done, however, trying to defend ourselves. Back to the mob mentality for the rest of you. Good luck in your witch hunt! Cheers. This seems to say 'HI am 0_Drunkenboxer'. though some people sitll think hi is 1forhtthethumb.
and Brandon posts when everybody figures out he is 0_Drunkenboxer
Congratulations genius!! Your super-sleuthing knows no bounds! Since Chuck is full_tilting, maybe with the fact that I stated that I hate Pittsburgh teams 10 HOURS ago, you and your crack-team of scientists could have deduced that I am not mariojr then! You get 6 stars for your very intelligant deduction. (applause) YES!!!! Well at first you said you were from Ohio, then you said you from Pennsylavania, then back to Ohio. So yeah, and why not tell everybody hours ago you were Drunkenboxer. Again, why not tell us until you slip up and accidently tell us.
and Brandon posts again.
It's ok. Believe what you want to believe. Civility from a mob of angry witch-hunters isn't something I strive for. I welcome your assaults with open arms, for I know the truth, and can sleep very comfortably at night. So go on with your "well thought out theories", it makes no matter to me at all. You're welcome to your own opinions, but in this case, you're just dead wrong. Good luck at the tables. Cheers. Well for somebody who played 100,000 hands never deviating or tilting is sure getting riled of in his own words 'a bunch of people whose entire lives are in forums'. Yeah right
and again with Brandon
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BJ- where did you play when your account was frozen?
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I played live.
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why not on another site? You have a "system" don't you? Why wouldn't it work on Stars?
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I'm sure it would. Having our accounts locked was a very stressful time, and we weren't sure if the reason it was happening was due to us playing in the same room or not, so why continue with any online play? Full Tilting cleared us, by the way, so my appearance in this forum is mearly to try to clear things up, and not to "win" any debates. I haven't spun anything, by the way, you guys are the ones distorting the facts. Peace like hair grease. Um there are soo many lies in your quotes that just posting them each time you post would make this blog unreadable.
BrandonJoseph47 posts about how he maintains such a strict discipline over his emotions. You can't make this stuff up.
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If this is a sweatshop, the employees must be Zen Buddhist monks. No one else has such discipline. They must also not know how to actually play poker. Otherwise, every instinct in your body would tell you to override the script in unusual circumstances to maximize your profits. These are obviously bots--maybe not 100% automated yet, but definitely not human. Very scary development, as is FTP's lack of a response.
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Because we don't tilt, and blow off our stacks, we are somehow not human. Does everyone here go on massive tilt? Maybe you should take a long look at your game if you are tilting off your stack constantly. If you subscribe to the theory that discipline is, quite possibly, THE most important tool in poker, you wouldn't tilt so much. Not understanding how staying off tilt is VERY important, makes me think I'm talking to a group that will NEVER understand.. You seem to be again be very upset over a few posts that you say don't matter because your innocent.
Brandon posts again....
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nlnut,
Are going to let Brandon go get some sleep now that you're here? He took the night shift for defending your BS story, so you should be able to take the day BS shift all by yourself.
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Lol Bluffthis! I DO, however, like your picture of Doc Holliday. Just something he also complimented Trebeck.
nlnut posts on the 'strategy' well kinda...
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I'll say it again...
In what form is this "playbook" is it on a computer or something like a printout? Simple question that doesn't involve releasing any "strategy" info.
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neither. its all memorized. However, we did first construct it on paper. So if you have a strategy memorized that allows you play deepstack NL which is amazing btw. Why can't you remember a specific story. Also, why not play in the comfort of your own homes with your own families if you remembered the strategy.
KurtSE follow up questions
Caught up after the overnight. Three areas I want to respond to.
(A) FTP response.
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Why do you ppl want a response from FT? They exonerated these guys. What do you expect them to say besides "after 1 month of research, we found the players to be innocent of all botting charges"
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Yes, that's what I expect, but they haven't even said that.
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It would lay some suspicions to rest. I personally don't see why they haven't done it already, but maybe FTPDough/Sean are talking with the appropriate department before they make a definitive statement.
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FTPSean is a key member of the security team. He IS the right department.
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This IS a HUGE ISSUE and Full Tilt has to handle it very delicately.
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Yeah, and I don't mind if they take their time to say "Hey 2+2, we're positive they're not bots but can't release reasons." but I expect they pop in and say "Yeah we know about this thread and these accounts and will make a comment. Try to hold back the wild speculation until then."
But no, they avoid it entirely. Since they are posting in this forum while this thread has been going, I expect they are in full blown panic mode realizing how badly they've effed this up. Just MHO. Again, I will wait for their comment.
(B) The numbers
I find DWarrior's analysis that the numbers are not the same to be suspect. I don't trust his numbers, but I can't do better. There are however, a few glaring issues.
1. His analysis of VPIP assumes that each hand is an independent event. This is not true. Each "player" is in fact an amalgamation of 9 different algorithms, one for each position. See Trebek's post that contained their positional stats. The "script" clearly has different formulas for each position. I would like to see the Standard Deviation numbers run on these positional stats.
2. His dismissal of the hypothesis ignores that one of the pieces of this hypothesis is that the players do take control from time to time, probably for coverplay. While this doesn't help the case that they are bots, it makes it very hard to dismiss the case with such a simple numerical analysis.
3. NLnut has himself admitted that they changed the "playbook" before, and might again. These 100k hands sample contain several algorithms, which will throw off the SD if you treat them as one.
And this ignores the post-flop numbers, specifically the river numbers. To any poker player those numbers are insane. I can think of no other explanation other than a computer "script" is generating such congruent numbers. Maybe another script is inputting them into the FTP client, making it a traditional bot, or maybe there are people inputting the actions in. But I am convinced that some computer program is determining the actions. Many others are as well.
Perhaps these player stats should be posted in the Probability forum. There are some smart folks in there always willing to help and their opinion, I would expect, would be enlightening. I'm at work so I doubt I'll get the chance, but I'll do it if I can.
(C) Response from nlnut and Brandon, et al
Lies. Changing stories. I think the collective BS meter has gone off the charts. We can all see the smoke and are being told there is no fire. I think we need to see the firepit before we decide this is just fog. nlnut and Brandon, please consider being VERY forthcoming. I know from previous experience that, while embarrassing, 2+2 and the zoo can admit when they made a mistake and were victims of groupthink. If you provide proof, I assure you a whole flock of 2+2ers who haven't posted yet will come out of the woodwork and join your chants calling all those of us who have participated idiots and sheep. Sounds fun, right? Help us out.
1. It won't prove anything, but it would reassure me (and probably others) greatly seeing a photo of the room the borg play in. Not proof, but seeing a livingroom with 8 monitors and 4 guys sitting around will ease concerns that this is just 16 CPUs in your closet. The sooner the better.
2. Why did your team not play together yesterday when its existence was made public? When did you find out about this thread on 2+2? Who found it first... I doubt it was Brandon who never even knew about 2+2 before yesterday, more likely nlnut or more likely still nation. Every other day you all play at the same time, concurrently, but yesterday you took turns and played sequentially. This reeks of trying to cover your tracks once you were outed. Why, for the last 3 months, do you play together every damn day and then separately on the day you're exposed?
3. How in God's name are those river numbers so similar? I know you don't want to share your playbook, but pardon my annoyance seeing as that is all we do here: share our strategies! It's 1BB/100... you didn't discover the holy grail of poker. You won't be revealing anything new here. Even if you don't divulge the exact algorithms which created those stats, at least share the CRITERIA on which the decision was made. What did you look at when you wrote the wrote the "book" on the river?
4. If you won't share the contents on the "book", please share its form. It it written in a notebook that everyone was made to memorize? Is it on giant posters on the walls where everyone can see it while they are playing? Is it in another computer or window that can be viewed while playing? Pics?
FOR TERBEK: Do you play in the evenings? nlnut has shared that he takes a dinner break at around 5 or 6 pm Eastern time. If you frequently (or semi-frequently) sign in around these times that would account for the appearance of the borg avoiding you.
entertainme posts a theory that is accepted by alot of people
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I suspect that the button presses are being done by a human. It could be a script telling them the proper move, very easily, but the fact that FT cleared them and their apparent lack of scale leads me to believe this.
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After reading this entire thread, this is my deduction from the evidence and the response from the players.
They do have 3 people signed in. They have an automated script running dictating action on every street. The human then clicks the button.
This allows them to be exonerated by FTP for botting.
The statistics say it's a computer making a decision. The fact that they're able to fly under the radar says it's a human clicking the button.
Chuck can admit to everything here except the script running because it would violate the T&C.
The Poker Mom
PokerFink post on the situation. Also FYI Fink has close to 6000 and is a very respected member of 2+2.
Hey everyone,
Like Nation, I am here on goodwill to back up a friend. I know Chuck personally, and although I am not a close friend of his like Nation, he is a friend and a good guy.
(For those that don't know, Nation is one of my best friends; we've known each other much longer than either of us have posted on 2+2.)
I found out about the system some time ago from Nation. He gave me a brief explanation of it and how Chuck and his friends operated it and told me they were doing very well. The things Nation and Chuck are saying in this thread are true and in-line with what I already knew about them. These guys are not using bots.
I think it's laughable that posters with little or no experience in statistics are posting statistics and saying "LOOK! PROOF! BOTS!" when the statistics prove nothing. Full Tilt is a multi-million dollar business. All these statistics (and probably many more) are easily available to them. They probably have professional statisticians on staff. If they ran a month-long investigation and decided that Chuck and his friends are not bots, well then maybe you should believe them and not some random 2+2 poster? I am amazed how little credence is being given to the investigation run by FTP.
I will be happy to answer any questions directed my way that I feel comfortable answering, but please realize that I’m not as familiar with the system as Nation. I can't offer any detailed explanation of their methods.
-fink
Now, at this point this had exploded all over the forums. What bothers me here is that it seems like at least 10-15 posters had came up to say the knew Chuck personally and that everything he had had done is legit. Now, if that is the case why the lying by Brandon early on. Why is Chuck and Naiton so defensive. And why on Earth if a sizable group of people in Pennsylvania knew the truth. Why not just post it.
Brandon on being called a liar.
I'm scum? Take a look at yourself, you flatlever. You're assuming that I care what a glad-handing, secret society, group of pawns/sheep/drones, really thinks. I couldn't care less. I'm also sure of the fact that you, and the rest of your crew,(i.e. Bluffthis,etc..) will all choke on crow by the time this is all over. In the meantime, have fun with your witch hunt. You've certainly got support from 90% of these caulk jockeys.(To the other 10% thanks!) Get a life. Remember this guy played over 100,00 hands without tilting.
nlnut posts
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i think the only way nlnut and BJ can flush all of our allegations away is come out with some proof. prove to us your system is legit and we'll back off. pictures, show us some stats from your PT database, assuming you have one. Do something to prove your innocence instead of just lying and telling us we're wrong.
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No need to show PT stats....I confirm that the stats trebek has posted are accurrate. Ill try to post a computer setup pix sometime today. Why not post his complete PT stats? He is bascially admitting here that Trebeck's stats are correct. Secondly, we know that he knew of this post at the earliest when Brandon posts. The first post asking for the setup was Dr.No888 who post on 05/09/07 at 9:36 P.M. Now nlnut tells us he will get the setup pic to us in awhile at 2:35 P.M. on 05/10/07. While this not be a serious thing it just adds to the question why wait?
More Brandon ... though he says hes done
You're right. I do care about my account. However, if they must freeze it again, and investigate further, then so be it. I have nothing to hide, and we will be repeatedly cleared if that happens. This is just getting into character bashing, and I will take part in no more of these threads(to a roaring applause, I'm sure). Let me just go on record as saying that you are all DEAD WRONG. It's a shame this is happening, and I apologize to Chuck and Nation if I hurt their reputations in any way. The rest of you will eventually figure out that you were wrong all along, and this is me gloating in advance, for I will NEVER come back to this jip joint of a sorry excuse for intelligant people's forum again!(more applause,even louder this time!) Again,apologies to Chuck and Nation, thank you 10(probably more like 5)%, and the rest of you can suck me sideways. Good luck at the tables, cheers.(more applause)
derosnec posts on an earlier nlnut post on 2+2.
OK. Ill try and make this as short as possible. Last night I allowed a close friend to play on my stars account. I went too bed. I trust this guy with my life. He told me he was gonna single table 1-2 nl. He sat down at 1/2 nl and lost $200. He then sat down at 3/6 no limit and lost another $200. He sits down at 5/10 nl and loses $600. He is now down $1000. He takes $1000 to 10/20 nl and cashes out for $3500. Total session profit was $1500. Now heres the point....if he had lost the $2000 it would have taken him months to pay me. I'm just shocked and really pissed he did this. I just woke up this morning and found his note that he won $1500...and hes asking....can I stop over later today for the money? How do I handle this? Obviously Ill never let him play alone again.....but in addition to that what should I do?
Well lets look at it. He says that he usually plays with this guy. Now, its not a straight collusion with the other evidence you have to wonder. Many people theorize this accounts for the disappearance of 1forthetumb. Here is the link to the page
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=inet&Number=8511500&Searchpage=3&Main=8511500&Words=nlnut&topic=&Search=true#Post8511500
nlnut respons to bluffthis on him being a liar
bluuthis...shut up and quit calling me a liar...you don;t know me, you don't have (nor do I) all the facts that FTP has. Again, these guys never tilt.
nlnut posts again on Nation:
Nation has visited my house on many occasions....and knows we are not bots....Isn't that all the proff he needs??? And Nation never met Brandon who plays with you up to twelve hours a day?
nlnut posts about the money after the investigation from FTP.
FYI, our accounts were reopened on march 27th. We cashed out a lot of the balance and left enough to play with. So...it's not about the money...nation and I are pursuing this fight to prove I am innocent. Yep innoncent people always cash out their money out of their account after being investigated.
nlnut posts at 3:01
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nlnut, or even brandon,
Could you tell me what info you provided to FTP? Was it just them telling you they were investigating you and you sent in IDs and such, or did you actually explain to them your "sweatshop"?
Im just curious as to how they concluded you werent bots, if you guys never explained to them your setup. I know this sucks for you guys, but you have at least admit its understandable why everyone here assumed(es) it was botting. Earlier you said they never asked for details, so I find it alarming they just concluded on their own it wasnt bots without having any knowledge of your setup.
Have you been in contact with FTP since this all came out? I hope at the very least they allow you to change your screen names.
thanks
Alobar
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We provided them scanned ID's and this........ I left this out earlier....sorry, but I did PM FTPSean...I told him about the group of us playing together.. He responded with this.....Charles,
I was in contact with the Security & Investigations Team who informed me that your access to your account has been temporarily suspended pending the conclusion of their investigation.
I don't have much more to add as I really don't provide support here, I more act as a representative and advocate should a member of the 2+2 community not receive a timely response from Support.
In instances like this, as I am not the individual performing the investigation and as such don't have direct access to all the information, it is best to correspond directly with the Security and Investigations Team. I was advised that you had received an initial email from the investigator informing you of the potential timeline and such. That same investigator will respond to you with updates and may have some questions for you as the investigation progresses, but as I said, I do not work directly with that group.
Hopefully the resolution to the investigation will not take too long. Good luck.
Sean
But, the Security and Investigations Team never asked us for any details or any expalanation.
I sent Security and Investigations Team an email yesterday, no reply yet. This suprised alot of people including me. It seeems that all FT need to see was some ID's and utliity bills and voila they are cleared. It seems FT never asked Chuck to defend the stats like Trebeck and 2+2 did. Also of note is the time 3:01 P.M. alot of people are asking for some kind of setup picture.Remember at 2:35 he said the setup pic was coming.
PokerFink seconds post, some of the questions answred are..
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anyone - is nation from Pittsburgh?
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Nation is from Johnstown.
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You, nation, and the third guy (as well as at least one other person) live in the same person and not one of you has (or can buy) a digital camera to take a photo in the next hour or so? Really?
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Just for clarification, I do not live in Johnstown. I'm in State College. I have been to Johnstown and played in some of the live games there with Nation and Chuck.
As far as I know, Nation does not own a digital camera. Well now, I know that Nation might not have a digital camera makes me feel like nlnut is not botting. Also of small noting later someone proves Nation had a camera when a pic of Nation taking a pic of himself appears.Also nlnut says Nation lives in Johnstown
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anyone - is nation from Pittsburgh?
nlnut - is your house in Johnstown?
If so, he just decided to drive all the way to Johnstown to visit you?
Fun Fact!! - I lived in Johnstown for about 6 mths in 95. Fun place.
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nation is currently living in Johnstown The same area as all of the suspected botters?
FTPDoug Responds:
First off, I want to apologize for the delay in responding. I probably should have popped in right away yesterday to mention that we were well aware of the issue. That's pretty much what I'm doing now. This kind of issue isn't anywhere near my area of expertise, and for that reason, Sean from Support should be giving some more detail from his point of view before the end of day today.
Obviously for security reasons, I can't say much about our bot policies and detection methods. I can, however, say that we treat these issues very seriously and review our policies often. In fact, we had a meeting today involving all of our top decision makers in response to this case to re-evaluate these procedures. I also want to thank Trebek for his vigilance, and to nation, Brandon, and nlnut for telling their stories as well. It's been a very interesting thread and debate.
Doug
nlnut posts the pic of his setup at 3:43 at 05/10/07. Also a man who can make AHK scripts and come up with an system for winning poker, and setup up multiple computers, cant figure out how to make his image bigger.
This is the Pix of our computer setup.
If someone knows how to resize the pix bigger please do so. I don't know how
CybrPunk post
I'm no genius but having worked in the computer industry for 15 years I can say I've never seen a setup like this designed for 3 people. There is absolutely zero comfort level in this setup and it's hard to beleive three guys who make the amounts of money you do would confine themselves to such a small workspace. I'd imagine you can at least afford seperate desks for the three of you @ roughtly $49 retail from OfficeDepot. In my experience, setups like this are designed for use by one person. Reference any MMOG multi-accounting thread on the internet and you'll find many similar setups.... all of which are designed and setup to be controlled by one person.
edit to add that if you look closely at the legs of these chairs you'll note that none of them is free to move in any direction due to the fact that they are so close together. It almost seems that you couldn't lean back in the middle chair without it affecting the other 2. I'm hard pressed to believe that three guys who netted $20k+ between profit and rakeback would work in this environment by choice.
I have to agree with this. Chuck by his pic seems to be a fairly decent sized man. Not to mention they are doing this for hours at a time, and they are playing by a set pattern. Why not get a little elbow room.
nlnut: Tries to clarify his use of AHK scripts
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Yes, we use AHK scripts for betsizing, betpot scripts.....see my post history from a few months back discusing them....but we DO NOT use an automated script like one that tells us what action to take or amount to bet or raise. We we're accused of doing this..........we definitely do not . At first you said humans made all decisions, it wasn't until the post came up that you finally admit to running AHK scripts
KurtSE asks some obvious questions
Questions still not answered (and one new one):
Why did your team not play together yesterday?
Why did you let Brandon post to the thread and not you, the 2+2er, yesterday at your house?
Why won't you share any bit of the "book", even those things that would help exonerate you but not give away the strategy?
Who has the authority to change the script?
How are the changes communicated to all the team members?
What assistant software do you use? Complete list please.
Will you provide, when the team reconvenes, video of everyone playing? Faces, screenames, etc. are not necessary.
NOSUP4U
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This is where you are exactly wrong in this case, it is precisely about following a system.
NOT about analyzing the "I think the dealer has a ten this time because she hasnt had one the last five times" or "He has to have air or he would of raised that turn". If you follow a system you get expected results and the larger the sample size the closer the results.
The system removes the dynamism (is that a word?) of a single hand of poker.
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Can you explain how the 'system' removes the dynamism (no idea if its a word) from YOUR OPPONENTS ALSO? Because you know, that has a lot ot do with it. Like say, if maybe the OP used to bet $5 into a $60 pot on the river and the 'real player with middle pair but not a bot for sure no way' kept folding to this $5 bet even though he was getting overwhelmingly good odds to call?
Honestly, I really don't get how anyone who plays poker and understands all the decisions that get made on later streets can believe that some human can NEVER deviate from some VERY LARGE set of predefined rules no matter what circumstances arise like $5 bets into $60 pots.
Add in that all their numbers match EXACTLY.
And the players have posted here on 2+2 about bot scripts.
And they lied and changed their story a million times.
Somehow they MEMORIZED this scripted way to play, even though just think of the multitude of scenarios you would face post flop to deal with. Its not just like you are facing a bet or check with a) top pair, b) better than top pair, or c) worse than top pair.
I dunno. I'm sure some of the 'it could be a system' people here are smart thinking individuals. But if you have read this whole thread and look at the overwhelming evidence, the lies, etc, I just cannot see concluding that its anything but a bot someone created and they are trying to cover it up as much as possible.
Just datamine them going forward. Since we all know about this now, there is no way they can run their bots, thus they will have to play on their own, thus their stats will change dramatically, no matter how hard they try to play like the program does. Humans JUST CANNOT ACHIEVE THAT LEVEL OF ACCURACY over such a large sample size.
That is what computers are for.
Mark
DWarrior
This is getting pretty pointless and you guys are just going back to the same stuff that have been answered over and over, adding on personal attacks.
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Can you explain how the 'system' removes the dynamism (no idea if its a word) from YOUR OPPONENTS ALSO? Because you know, that has a lot ot do with it. Like say, if maybe the OP used to bet $5 into a $60 pot on the river and the 'real player with middle pair but not a bot for sure no way' kept folding to this $5 bet even though he was getting overwhelmingly good odds to call?
Honestly, I really don't get how anyone who plays poker and understands all the decisions that get made on later streets can believe that some human can NEVER deviate from some VERY LARGE set of predefined rules no matter what circumstances arise like $5 bets into $60 pots.
Add in that all their numbers match EXACTLY.
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If opponent variation affects stats that much to make my statistics calculations questionable (which I agree with), how come the river bet stats are so exact? Shouldn't that be most affected by variance / table conditions? Could that, then, be the result of variance?
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And the players have posted here on 2+2 about bot scripts.
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AHK scrips, I use those myself.
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And they lied and changed their story a million times.
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Their story seems consistent, and the few changes they've made seem reasonable. Like nation not knowing all the details because he's not in the sweatshop. Or BrandonJoseph giving a fake background story in the beginning, I believe that was bad judgment on his part.
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I dunno. I'm sure some of the 'it could be a system' people here are smart thinking individuals. But if you have read this whole thread and look at the overwhelming evidence, the lies, etc, I just cannot see concluding that its anything but a bot someone created and they are trying to cover it up as much as possible.
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I would say a good 70% of this "overwhelming evidence" is personal attacks and things that, if done the opposite way, would elicit the same response. The example I brought up before is the timing out, apparently insta-actions are results of botting, as well as timing out on decisions. If you have any experience using AHK scripts, you would know that very rarely are these actions instantaneous, but why would a bot running on today's computers take more than 15 seconds to make decisions? Oh, that's right, because occasionally a human takes over to throw everything off.
nlnut did change his story, and they still refused to be completely fothcoming instead being very defensive.
Tuco asking questions
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The biggest thing, to me, that stands out is how all these people are posting all these reasonable questions that deserve answers and have facts to back them up, yet all of the defenders of the "botter" pick and choose the easiest, and most pointless things to answer.
Even after people quoting themselves, asking multiple times for answer to the REAL questions, "botter" and his party keep choosing the retarded ones that no on actually cares about, or making person attacks.
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QFT
Hey Nation/NLnut/Doug. We are going to talk about this issue on our poker show this Sunday. Would you like to come on to discuss it? I promise it will be a civil discussion.
Things that make me think that something is wrong here:
1. Brandon's actions throughout the thread.
2. When asked why each player took so long to make even the simplist of decisions, the answer was that they were discussing amongst each other what to do. Obviously, if they were doing that and making situational folds/calls/bluffs that flies directly in the face of their rigid strategy story. Also, turn and river stats wouldn't be so close because of this.
3. River bet stats. I don't see any way that these could be so close, especially if each tough decision is discussed.
4. That a bunch of guys who put such an effort into their system would have ABSOLUTLEY no interest in improving their play or moving up.
5. The auto-folding of miniscule raises compared to pot-size. AT LEAST SOME of these should be called if only for meta-game.
6. That when the OP signed on each of the three suspected bots AUTOMATICALLY left their games. Why would they do that? If it was a human sweatshop, wouldn't they just say to the other "hey, dude who is pwning us signed in. Don't sit at a table with him. Play in another game"
7. That someone who couldn't install an anti-virus program is scripting and setting up computer sweatshops.
Please, someone address these and the other unanswered questions.
Tuco.
nlnut
Maybe this will help my case...We are constantly taking notes on players at the table. Why would a bot take notes. I just looked and my notes database is 256kb. estimates to be on 5000 or more players. now why would a bot need to take notes for?????? Why takes notes if you are playing every situation the same?
steel108 posts
I don't know why, but I actually ran the numbers through (probably to come and defend nation), and statiscally speaking, ITS IMPOSSIBLE for these 4 players to have the same stats over such a big sample. It is litterally 4 Standard Deviations away from the norm. I wanted to come here and say that it was possible for there stats to be similar, but it turns out that there is less than a half percent chance. I'm not saying Nation is in on it, but mathmatically, its not only improbable, but pretty close to impossible for there stats to converge.
I wanted to to make sure I did the calculations right so I brought the data to my Stats prof and he verifyed it.
DONT TAKE THIS PERSONALLY NATION.
UATrewgaz posts a point
Exactly, if I'm sitting in a room making $8 an hour playing poker but I notice I'm makign say $30 an hour at the table, what motivation do I have to keep playing for the flat rate? As soon as I memorized the "system" I'd just quit and play on my own.
That's because there is no "system" to memorize, it's either bots or a program suggesting actions that the human player should
FTPSean's Official Response
2+2,
I’m sorry for the delay in posting to the bot thread. We felt it was very important to thoroughly review the investigation notes and findings again before commenting and I should have just posted a quick message to let you guys know we were looking into it.
We were definitely aware of the importance of this situation and held a series of meetings to discuss our established policies as well as the terms of this specific case. While I am unable to discuss the specific details of the investigation, I will make some general comments.
We take bots very seriously, and for obvious reasons cannot go into the details of our policies, procedures and detection methods. Our meetings served to further refine these policies and processes in general terms, and also with regards to this investigation specifically. Having said that, if Full Tilt Poker Security confirms the use of a bot by any player, all accounts involved would be permanently closed and all funds remaining in the accounts could be subject to seizure.
After doing our due diligence in this case, we came to the following determinations:
• During the investigation we found the evidence to be inconclusive in supporting either determination (human or bot). This was discussed at length many people believing that the reason it was not 100% was because of the human player taking over.
• After careful consideration, the evidence did not warrant the seizure of funds and permanent account closure. Also of note after reopening nlnut admits to taking all but necessary funds out of his account, again innoncent people don't do this.
• We stand by our decision. Having said that, re-opening an account after an investigation such as this one does not mean we have made an irreversible decision. We will continue to reevaluate this situation.
It is our responsibility to ensure a level playing field for all of our players. As evidenced by this thread, some situations are not as clear cut as they first appear and require additional refinement of established policies and procedures. We are working on additional measures to detect any activity that compromises the integrity and fairness of our games; this is of paramount importance and will never be taken lightly. This reads to me like oops we our group of people we pay to do this failed, where a bunch of guys with google and some old posts succeeded.
Sean
Here is the link to the new post by Sean
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.phpCat=0&Number=10324465&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1&nt=10
KurtSE not getting alot of answers post his thoughts
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someone explain to me how these stats would prove they are bots anyway. Wouldn't it just prove they all know the system equally well and follow it exactly?
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Yes, that's what it would prove.
nlnut's contention is:
At some point they sat down with a pen and paper and wrote down a system, then spent a week memorizing it and threw away their notes. Then 3 people, through the power of sitting next to each other, managed to execute this strategy PERFECTLY, with so little deviation, that their stats matched exactly over, what, half a million hands and half a year.
They also discussed tough decisions, but these decisions did not create any perturbation in the stats (on the river no less). These discussions didn't create any deviance from the system, not even a beneficial one. They also made changes to the strategy and communicated them to all players instantly and with 100% compliance.
Also, at one point one of the team members left, and a new team member was brought in. Without the use of ANY written or electronic aids this person was taught the system so that they instantly and without a learning curve could generate the same stats.
My contention is:
Does not compute.
This is the last of the quotes so far from the original thread. Other than Sean's reply going forward all quotes will be on Seans official reply thread.
Trebek's reply to Sean's post
Yikes. We all knew that a non-substantive response was likely, but that was pretty bad after all of what's already transpired. Hopefully, you'll be at least a little more forthcoming in the future.
I wasn't going to post too many details from the emails I traded with FT, but because of this lack of response by FT it seems necessary. I realize you're not going to answer many of these questions but I'll ask anyways.
After I saw the bots reappear and sent an email that read like the end of my OP, your representative replied indicating that there are many different actions that FT can take when an investigation is completed. That if complete guilt can't be shown, restrictions are placed on the accounts or continued monitoring takes place. In your OP, you acted as if the accounts were completely exonerated after a lack of proof was found. You don't have to go into detail about whatever double-secret-probation you placed the accounts on. But please answer directly, did you completely exonerate the accounts or did you take some level of action?
In justifying how the bots were likely human grinders, your rep alluded to how they had a significant chat history. This seems pretty frightening. Can you confirm or deny that this was used as evidence that they weren't bots?
Did you use the fact that most days one tournament was played in addition to the 16 or so cash game tables as proof it wasn't a bot?
Why have I been thanked over and over and over for my help, if I have misunderstood the situation? FTPDoug even thanked me for my vigilance in posting the OP. Seems pretty weird to thank someone who created a firestorm of negative publicity if you believe that they've misunderstood the situation?
In my original email, I offered to help in any way I could, discussing the bots' tendencies or whatever. No one ever took me up on it. Do you think that was a mistake?
Did you come up with an explanation why human grinders would get up from the tables when I logged in? Did you look at timestamps to confirm this did or didn't happen?
In the emails, your rep would refer to the stat picture I sent itself as a piece of evidence. I assumed that upon beginning the investigation you would have created your own versions of the stat pictures with access to all hand histories. Thus you'd have created stat summaries using 300-500k hand samples for each player. Can you please confirm that you have the ability to do this? It won't be giving away any secrets, we all assume (hope) you can.
Hopefully, you'll at least discuss hypotheticals. Hypothetically, if you had concrete proof that players were using a computerized decision making system with humans inputting the actions, was this allowed previously? Is it allowed in the future? Have any policies changed on what players are or are not allowed to do?
Hypothetically, if you were to have hand samples of hundreds of thousand of hands for several players, is there any level of precision with which the convergence of the stats would by itself be enough proof that robotic decision making is being made?
This is just one guy's opinion, but my impression from the emails was that your investigation was indeed less detailed than my OP. It seems that you very likely did think they were bots, but did not have the level of sophistication at poker to prove it (even with access to all kinds of info, hh's, timestamps, whatever). You then placed some kind of vague restriction on the accounts, my post erupted, you realize you've made a mistake, and are now hoping that conclusive proof comes out in the main thread. Thus allowing you to finally reverse your decision and move on. Am I close?
Bluffthis post on Sean's reply
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I'm afraid this whole situation is very unsatisfactory. As a c50k a month hand player with accounts at multiple sites, I will certainly look to migrate business elsewhere.
I think the key issues are:
1) The concept of allowing multiple users at one location is not ethical in my opinion. This may not be covered by the terms and conditions, and therefore can't be acted on, but this is merely an argument for updating terms and conditions.
2) Almost everyone believes there is a degree of decision automation here which goes beyond basic charts. The statistics are too similar across all 3 streets. There is debate about the degree of this automation. Again your terms & conditions do not appear tight enough - apparently you operate to a binary is a bot/isn't a bot definition.
3) I would agree that to confiscate funds you need evidence beyond reasonable doubt. But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence here, which suggests on the balance of probabilities these guys are botting. In my opinion this is enough to ban accounts and return funds.
The simple question to ask is whether if you convened a meeting of all your customers whether they would approve or disapprove of the outlined operation (even that agreed by DLNUT as fact). The answer would overwhelmingly, in my opinion, be that they would be disgusted by such practices.
I will be extremely angry to face any of these players again (yes, I have lost a stack to Full_Tilting), irrespective of my views of their capabilities.
Full Tilt faces a choice. It can seek to sweep the inevitable continued issue of bots under the carpet, with complicit acceptance from winning players, until their profits are eroded away. This has two issues 1) Customers do have the ability to switch away to other sites, and integrity can be a point of competitive advantage) 2) It gives your business a limited lifespan before profits are competed away on your bot infested tables
Alternatively you can work with your core customer base (yes, here is a good place to start) to tackle the issue head on.
Currently, your stance is clearly that of see no evil hear no evil. Don't underestimate the power of viral marketing in your business. If your business loses momentum it will not recover. I for one would be a part of that negative publicity generation, unless you up your game.
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The above is indeed a very good response, and Sean needs to answer its points to have any credibility. I would like to emphasize a couple of those points and add to them.
1) Same IP play
You can come up with all the excuses you want for this, from college dorms to small towns to wifi or whatever, but it is a huge issue and one that touches on collusion. Some players might have to be limited in their play options or indeed given no options, in order to insure game integrity for the vast majority of players.
2) Over-enablement of software aides
Now this doesn't just apply to FT. But allowing HUDs and datamining undermines the integrity of the game in the minds of the casual players, and allows a hyper-predatory decimation of losing players when the emphasis should be on the long-term goal of keeping the games going, instead of focusing on short-term gains that risk the long-term viability of the games. Choose the long-term viability of the game for both your business and the players over short-term gains and desire of some players here to over-fish the waters heedless of its consequences.
3) FT needs to see the many alternatives in these situations, and have several alternative responses to match them, instead of just making it only 2 choices.
This means that it's not just botting or not botting, with "inconclusive" always being a win for the investigated account. As pointed out in the main thread, a mix of botting and regular play to cover same has to be considered.
And it means that there is more than one response to an investigated player. It's not just guilty and funds seized, or innocent/inconclusive and keep on as usual. The third option as noted by others is to say it is inconclusive but doesn't smell right, and return their funds and close their accounts.
4)*Pro-active* means need to be taken to root out botting and collusion.
This means not hiding behind the valid but ass-covering response of "we can't divulge our methods" stuff, and making a public committment to datamining the hand history database to find these things yourself instead of it being on the players mostly as a default. If FT (or any other site) isn't willing to expend some computing and investigating time on such pro-active means, then any statements that they do take botting and collusion seriously are bald-faced lies. Taking seriously = using *effective* means.
Finally I would like to commend FT and Doug and Sean for their ongoing communication with 2+2'ers. I realize it's not always easy and you face lots of tough questions. And that you two aren't the owners and have constraints on what you can say. But a substantive response to the points raised here is necessary for FT's future credibility.
The part I agree with is the overfishing. Even if they can't 100% prove bots what is happening is wrong. I will talk more about the overfishing problem at the end of my post. On to more quotes
stompin quote
Its clear poker sites need to change their policies on bots or they're in for a losing battle.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt will never happen, assuming the human sweatshop defense is acceptable.
Lets be realistic about the human sweatshop though...Isn't it a lot easier and more likely that if such a system exist to produce near exact results over large samples, and this system seems to cover all streets of play (seemingly complex rulesset) that it is much easier and more practical to implement using a programs?
It would be an immense task to have humans learn a system and execute with such ungodly performance that you cant tell who is the teacher and who is the student. Has there been any evidence of ramp up time on any of the accounts to support that they were learning this new system?
I wouldn't see it an issue at all if human botting were banned as well...or any excessively systematic play that suggests a team environment, or excessive sw assistance. You dont have to take their money, but kindly let them know you arent interested in thier business show them the door tyvm.
The number or legitimate human botshops that would be inconvenienced would be negligible to the the number to bots operating under the guise of being a human botshop. Why? because a human botshop, while theoretically possible, is completely impracticable. I see no reason why anyone with a system so well defined would continue to try and have human botters when it is so much easier to code it - especially when they cant get caught either way. makes no sense.
If you want to avert the bot crisis that is surely imminent, you need to eliminate the cover provided by the human botshop. Ban all play that looks like an excessively systematic strip mining operation. no explanations other than we dont want your business. give them back their money and say good bye. if you can prove beyond a doubt they are bots, keep their money.
Even this will only slow them down as they get smart and disguise their behavior better.
If you are a legitimate player who thinks you will get tangled up by such a policy...I dunno...take a pee break once in a while, tilt like everyone else on the planet, take shots and lose 1/4 your roll in one night, switch from a 20/15 to a 40/30 after six beer. works for me.
To finish up, Alot of people have asked for an actual statician to look at the numbers. I am working on that I hope to have an answer soon.
As of 10:47 P.M. on 05/11/2007 This is up to date. Now, if you care on to my personal feelings.
I am above all us very upset at the overall pokers communities response to this. I think people either think ...
A) I am too good of a poker player to be beat by a bot
B) It's not affecting me. Either because 1. They don't play at FT or 2. Don't play 1/2 FR on FT.
Granted these guy are at best marginally winning poker players. Yet, the thought of what is going on should be a concern to every single poker player that plays online. Also, of concern is FT complete lack of concern for their customers, and their lack of doing some form of punishment or at the very minimum explaing why nothing was done.
I posted this blog as a way to show people all the relevant posts. Alot of people just see Trebeck's stats and think thats all. There are other posters who have said that their stats show the same thing as Trebeck's. Most all is Viper930 post.
I have been thinking alot about Rain Man. The casino could not prove that Rain Man wasn't cheating their BJ tables, but that didn't stop them from kicking Tom Cruise and Rain Man out. The same situation should be taken by FT.
Now, I am well aware that in BJ is taking money from the house where as poker they are taking money from fish, but I think people are missing the long term effect of this. I know people are always looking for a bigger edge and I understand that. But in know way is what nlnut doing should be legal. Depending on what you believe he is at best running a house where he supervises players or at worse a single person using multiple accounts. How on Earth he got aways with this is crazy. Also on a very big bot software site it says FT does not actively pursue botters. This to me explains why he doesn't at least explore PS. BTW PS ocassionaly hassle people according to the website. Now, yes bots can still be exploited. Though this causes some people to dismiss this as 'they are making 1.5BB who cares? I care becasue for a long time it was understood only decent bots were in limit, and even then they could only play well in certain situations. Now, we are dealing with bots that can play deepstack NL HE. This has me concerned that we are only a few years maybe less from a bot that will own even a better than avg NLHE player. Don't let pride make you worry about this, especially if FT will mever enfore a strict anti botting policy.
FT email is support@fulltiltpoker.com - Please email them and tell them your feelings.
If you have any questions for me please post a comment. Also you can reach me at
Pocketfives under username Zelk
and on 2+2 under the name Zelk
Thanks, for taking the time to read this. It took almost two days of straight work and I am glad to be done with it.
2 comments:
Good post. Didn't read all of it but it sounds like Full Tilt have acted really badly. I'll be writing to them and probably boycotting the site.
Excellent reading...job well done bringing it to light. There are other scenarios that could be considered such as cut-off starting hands that are bot/human, depending on stakes. Taking into account number of players and a starting hand, you can get relaibale statistics to make a bot/human strategy work for deep stack play.
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