PokerStars Finds and Removes Ten Bots
Just last week, we reported that PokerStars has been playing host to a ring of colluding players from China. It seems that now they’ve busted a ring of bots, too. Once again, players are complaining about how long it took the PokerStars staff to figure out who the bots are and to get rid of them.
According to PokerStars figures, the ten bots played a total of at least 8 million hands and they managed to earn $57,000. A PokerStars representative posted to the popular 2+2 poker forum explaining that initially members of the ring were suspected of collusion, but eventually that suspicion was dropped. PokerStars did not, however, drop the investigation. Instead, they looked at the account’s irregularities, compared it to other accounts, and discovered a total of ten accounts that were being played by bots.
Players complained that once PokerStars ascertained that the accounts were bot accounts, PokerStars did not immediately close them. According to a statement from a PokerStars spokesman, the staff wanted to make sure that they had found all of the accounts in the ring before closing accounts, as they didn’t want to “spook” the other account holders and cause them to withdraw their funds before the accounts were found.
The PokerStars representative explained that “PokerStars takes its commitment to bot detection and removal extremely seriously, and will continue to do so, both behind the scenes with our tools (which are under constant review and improvement), and in response to player-generated suspicions. Most player reports of bot suspicions are false alarms, but we still investigate each one thoroughly, and when they actually do locate a previously undetected bot, appropriate action will always be taken.”
It is unclear how much money was won illegally and how much will need to be paid back to players. It is also unclear how much of the money won by the bots was cashed out prior to the freezing of the accounts.
