Bot farm said to have taken $10m out of ACR economy

A guy named TylerRM posted this on 2+2: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...n-wpn-1830157/

Whlie there is no verification that his numbers are accurate, he posts a lot of links to data, and I'm guessing this is roughly correct.

ACR has long been known to be poor at detecting bots, and even worse at banning them when people complain. They briefly did a campaign where they would ban bots and publicly out them, but that died quickly.

It is not clear why ACR is so bad at removing bots. Some suspect that owner Phil Nagy likes the massive rake and activity they generate, while others think ACR just doesn't care because it really only affects pros at the end (fish will lose no matter what).

This led to British poker pro Patrick Leonard to post this rant on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/padspoker/status...16713845579969



Patrick isn't really wrong here, but this isn't the best statement. He fails to call out any particular site (though it's highly implied to be against ACR, and to a lesser extent, GG), and he doesn't give any recommendations as to where to play. He does semi-endorse Pokerstars in a subsequent tweet when people criticized him for this.

Unfortunately, "just don't play on these sites" isn't an option if you're a poker pro without live options, or if the live options don't work for you (for example, if you have children you can't leave at home). Also, in the US market, there are not many options if you don't have legalized online poker in your state (or even if you do, as those sites are fairly dead). You basically have ACR, Bovada, Global, Betonline, and those fail apps like Pokerbros.

Bovada is the tits , really saddned they moved out of ny and won't let nyers play. Not like owner of bovada forget his name will ever step foot in usa.

This did not appear to stay up for long :

For many years acr didn't let you see river card of opponent to protect the fish. Said it was to hard to fix. Now you can see players holdings. 100 k is a pittance. I like it though

Well, this whole thing is getting weird.

As dmndkutr posted, Chris Moneymaker posted a strange challenge to people, offering $100k (of ACR's money) to anyone who can create a bot to play on there, and get 5,000 hands through without getting caught. He claimed anyone successfully doing so would also get a "job at WPN (the ACR network)".

Then... the post vanished.

It was replaced by a new one, this time with Ebony Kenney of all people, speaking with Chris about the matter, and basically making the identical offer.

https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status...04172075979210


Someone saved the original Chris-only version: https://streamable.com/jdqypm



There are all kinds of bizarre things about this.

First off, as I said in my tweet, it was a strange choice to replace Chris' rather straightforward video with the conversational one featuring Ebony. While Ebony Kenney might have some positives as a brand ambassador, sincerity and trustworthiness are NOT what she's known for. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

In fact, as recently as 2022, Ebony Kenney made allegations that Daniel Negreanu had sexually harassed her at the table (with his eyes, lol) so badly that she couldn't wait to bust out of a $10k event. However, Daniel countered with a video showing that in 2014, Ebony said in an interview that he was her favorite poker player, and that he had a "great energy" to him! LOL! So somehow in 2014 he was her favorite player and had a great energy, yet many years later she was retroactively super-offended by his behavior in 2008. Riiiiiiiight.

So why pick Ebony to co-deliver this controversial offer about botting, rather than just Chris himself, who is generally liked and trusted? No idea.


But the offer itself is also strange. Chris is not making this offer on his own dime, nor is he claiming it's his idea. Rather, he's just delivering a message from ACR management, presumably Phil Nagy.

So they're offering people the free, unrestricted opportunity to cheat with bots, with zero consequence if caught? And if not caught, they get $100k for cheating? What?!

Oh, and then there's also the problem that someone running a successful, multimillion dollar bot ring isn't going to give away their secrets for $100k.


As you might imagine, this offer is NOT going over well.

Also, there are logistical issues. How do you prove you were running a bot for all 5,000 hands? Do you need video of all 5,000 hands being played, and the bot playing it for you? They don't specify this.

ACR is really screwing up their PR lately. This is even worse than Phil Nagy's disasterous Christmas poem, following site failures.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Well, this whole thing is getting weird.

As dmndkutr posted, Chris Moneymaker posted a strange challenge to people, offering $100k (of ACR's money) to anyone who can create a bot to play on there, and get 5,000 hands through without getting caught. He claimed anyone successfully doing so would also get a "job at WPN (the ACR network)".

Then... the post vanished.

It was replaced by a new one, this time with Ebony Kenney of all people, speaking with Chris about the matter, and basically making the identical offer.

https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status...04172075979210


Someone saved the original Chris-only version: https://streamable.com/jdqypm





There are all kinds of bizarre things about this.

First off, as I said in my tweet, it was a strange choice to replace Chris' rather straightforward video with the conversational one featuring Ebony. While Ebony Kenney might have some positives as a brand ambassador, sincerity and trustworthiness are NOT what she's known for. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

In fact, as recently as 2022, Ebony Kenney made allegations that Daniel Negreanu had sexually harassed her at the table (with his eyes, lol) so badly that she couldn't wait to bust out of a $10k event. However, Daniel countered with a video showing that in 2014, Ebony said in an interview that he was her favorite poker player, and that he had a "great energy" to him! LOL! So somehow in 2014 he was her favorite player and had a great energy, yet many years later she was retroactively super-offended by his behavior in 2008. Riiiiiiiight.

So why pick Ebony to co-deliver this controversial offer about botting, rather than just Chris himself, who is generally liked and trusted? No idea.


But the offer itself is also strange. Chris is not making this offer on his own dime, nor is he claiming it's his idea. Rather, he's just delivering a message from ACR management, presumably Phil Nagy.

So they're offering people the free, unrestricted opportunity to cheat with bots, with zero consequence if caught? And if not caught, they get $100k for cheating? What?!

Oh, and then there's also the problem that someone running a successful, multimillion dollar bot ring isn't going to give away their secrets for $100k.


As you might imagine, this offer is NOT going over well.

Also, there are logistical issues. How do you prove you were running a bot for all 5,000 hands? Do you need video of all 5,000 hands being played, and the bot playing it for you? They don't specify this.

ACR is really screwing up their PR lately. This is even worse than Phil Nagy's disasterous Christmas poem, following site failures.

---

Ray Bitar Jr. continues to not disappoint ! lols

Any chance Ebony Kenney and Chris Moneymaker had a thing???

the ebony kenney thing doesn't matter druff. your sexism is showing again

the problem is having 2 rec players trying to diffuse a serious problem with a bullshit challenge.

i think moneymaker just does not understand and has been denying the existence of bots on ACR for a while now

https://twitter.com/wugwugwugwug/sta...xCzDg-ISg&s=19


i think this goes much deeper than him. that 10 milly bot farm also paid 3 million in rake , so in the end acr is getting paid.

with all the data sets they have , ACR/GG can easily filter out for bots but they choose not to , so imo they are complicit in this

https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status...04172075979210

:lol3

gl and lol Online Poker #2024

https://twitter.com/LucasBalizaPLO5/...32679132319932

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dmndkutr

This did not appear to stay up for long :

---

Tyler RM on the 2 plus 2 did prove collusion and bots with graphs supporting infestation of bots.

ACR continues to step on its own tail.

First, a guy claims to have already run a bot with 5000 hands since the challenge began:

https://twitter.com/RangeTrainerDev/...80893194543391
https://twitter.com/RangeTrainerDev/...15971983409207

Moneymaker verified that the bot doesn't have to win:

https://twitter.com/CMONEYMAKER/stat...16580609798235



However this post would seem to indicate that the bot DOES have to win, but then they clarified in the next tweet that it doesn't.

https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status...62994695127435


But then they said the bots can't be "auto fold machines", which means.... what?

https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...65685152645393



Nobody likes this "challenge". It's just upsetting the community, and the general consensus is that ACR is being adversarial about the issue, rather than trying to work to eliminate the bots.

So why are they doing this, if it's just getting everyone angry? And why are they doubling down on it when there's community pushback?

This is one of the worst PR jobs I've ever seen in online poker. Complete fiasco.

Now there's even talk by players of boycotting ACR. This probably won't work (because players tend to be selfish and have a hard time quitting if winning, and also because many players don't read social media), but it definitely is a horrible look.

Just two weeks ago, ACR had a relatively good image in the commnity. Right now everyone is bashing them, and somehow the GGPoker super scandal (which should have been the much bigger story) has fallen into the background.

All ACR had to do was offer to work with the community to eliminate the bots, and put some real effort into doing so. Instead they're on this bizarre campaign to prove everyone wrong.

:fail2

n

https://youtu.be/5b9uqE5ntkQ

Embedded Tweet

please dont forget this GG problem as well. Dnegs has not tweeted a word about this and Koon who specifically was hired for this has made zero attempts at communicating as well.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...ef6dc91cfe.jpg

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hesterandeldridge

please dont forget this GG problem as well. Dnegs has not tweeted a word about this and Koon who specifically was hired for this has made zero attempts at communicating as well.

---

I covered it on radio. Archives of that part of the show (both GG and ACR) will be released today.

No point to shout into the wind of Twitter right now about GG, as everyone's focus is on ACR right now. When the ACR matter dies down, I will start pressing GG again to answer the questions I posed.

I agree that GG's entire "integrity" program was just window dressing, and they haven't taken it seriously.

https://twitter.com/Barry_Carter/sta...36299524137194

:lol

While that MonkerGuy joke was hilarious, in all seriousness, ACR does need to send the $100k to SOMEONE since they cancelled the contest. See their statement below, which seems to have been crafted directly from my advice yesterday:

https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...36766933451217


So it looks like they caught Matt's bot, which he theorizes occurred because he contacted them for clarification. Then he was in the process of making a better bot, and right before he deployed it, they cancelled the contest.

However, it is very unethical to cancel a $100k challenge just as people are getting close to completing it.

ACR should award the $100k to whoever got the closest, and then move on with what they claim they're going to do.

Embedded Tweet

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hesterandeldridge

please dont forget this GG problem as well. Dnegs has not tweeted a word about this and Koon who specifically was hired for this has made zero attempts at communicating as well.

---

I covered it on radio. Archives of that part of the show (both GG and ACR) will be released today.

No point to shout into the wind of Twitter right now about GG, as everyone's focus is on ACR right now. When the ACR matter dies down, I will start pressing GG again to answer the questions I posed.

I agree that GG's entire "integrity" program was just window dressing, and they haven't taken it seriously.

---

Thanks for following up on the GG stuff. They are pushing to be regulated in the US market. That would be a disaster - if they are the benchmark for legal US operators and are functioning as they do today.

There is a big problem on ACR which is getting little attention.

ACR is not just ACR. It's a network of skins which all feed into the same games. That network is called WPN (Winning Poker Network). ACR is the flagship skin.

The problem is that there are certain skins aimed at foreign players which are behaving quesitonably, to say the least. Poker King is rumored to be the preferred skin for a lot of the bot operators.

It is not clear to me whether the skins do player identity verification, or if WPN does it. If it's done at the skin level, a dirty skin can just cram on a ton of fake bot accounts, and ACR has no control over it.

I have asked ACR for clarification on this policy, but of course they won't answer me. I think it's no coincidence that a lot of the bot operators seem to prefer the Poker King skin.

https://x.com/Matthew_Waxman/status/...061187886?s=20

I am no riggie but had some god awull Nut to ace top flush beat by sf 2x. Few days ago had kk board was 33k obv what happened next Other one I took was aa into a33 board. Sometimes I do heavy lifting had kk intokk3 board min bet call next card was ace all chips went in quad kings vs ace full house aa boat. That was really nice to get guy fell out of chair insta quit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by garrett

gl and lol Online Poker #2024

https://twitter.com/LucasBalizaPLO5/...32679132319932

---

Oh color me shocked there are bots on the chinese poker apps.

Why can't they just keep sending links to player while they are on choosing a card to show they are not a bot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FRANKRIZZO

Why can't they just keep sending links to player while they are on choosing a card to show they are not a bot.

---

People have been able to beat those captchas, so those aren't particularly effective. If you're advanced enough to program a winning bot network, you're probably also able to beat captchas.

I see. People reported them on 2 plus 2 tell tale clues where long sessions same response time certain countries like russia where suspect. People are sending reports to acr think they are being ignored.

The poker community's attention span is like that of a 2-year-old.

Here this was a pretty huge bot scandal, ACR handled it terribly, and then the community just gave up without any real progress. This is even worse than how the community lost interest in the GGPoker superuser scandal, as at least that one there was the excuse that the ACR story stole the attention.

Here there was no big story to steal the attention. It just died. So... win for ACR, I guess?

ACR took this opportunity to very quietly a statement on the situation, pledging the same old BS they pledge every time there's bot concerns brought onto social media:

Quote:

---

Response to recent security concerns

January 17, 2024

WPN takes game security and integrity very seriously. We deploy significant resources and technology toward identifying any bad actors that look to gain an unfair advantage or cheat our players out of their funds.

Players have recently expressed concern over a group of accounts playing over the course of the past 12 months. These accounts have all been through a rigorous set of security protocols through the natural course of business. These protocols were performed in real-time prior to the list being made public earlier this month. Given the serious nature of the accusations against these specific accounts, we have undergone additional review.

As a result of the standard protocols, the majority of the identified accounts have previously been prohibited from playing on the site and have not been active since the protocols were enforced. Several dozen of the publicly identified accounts passed the screening, which included hundreds of hours of video recordings of play that we insisted be performed to assure that the account was legitimate. Given the continued concerns expressed by members of our player community, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to suspend each of these accounts and put those accounts through additional scrutiny before they are permitted to continue play.

In accordance with our policies and where such determinations can be made, we will refund players where we have identified bad actors negatively impacted other players.

The fight against bad actors using a variety of means to cheat is an ongoing battle for all online poker operators. We are committed to investing in staying ahead of these cheaters.

As part of that commitment we consistently review our security protocols and make changes and improvements based on feedback, player behaviour and as a result of our continual investigations into suspicious play. Our current security protocols include:

- Mandatory player documentation updates

- Captcha technology and table pixelation changes

- Software that renders bots who use live data collection such as PPL or OpenPPL ineffective

- Video-recorded sessions of players for pattern evaluation where play is matched to previous hand histories to compare results

- Deep dives of hand and play history across all our games

- Recent banning of virtual and remote access machines

- Introduction of features such as PLO Reshuffle which puts folded hole cards back into the deck to reduce collusion opportunities

- Recent partnership with GTO Wizard to enhance GTO analysis protocols and detection

- Investment in tools that improve data analysis and detection capabilities


As a result of these recent concerns, we are undergoing a full review of these current protocols and expect to make additional changes and enhancements to our security measures and to increase our already significant investment in security and game integrity.

We hope that players will continue to trust us with their play as they have for more than 20 years and will take comfort in the knowledge that protecting the game is one of our most important activities.

---

https://www.acrpoker.eu/blog/acr-pok...rity-concerns/


How quietly was this released?

It was not put out on their official Twitter account ACR_POKER, nor did any of their pros tweet it out. Almost nobody tweeted about it at all, aside from me and a few othres.

I'll give my response to the statement itself in the next post...

Most of this statement isn't really worth discussing. It's the same list of empty promises and phony pledges of vigilance we've seen from ACR time and time again, regarding the bot issue.

However, I would like to discuss two things.

First, their "PLO Reshuffle" idea is horrible. Like it's really really really bad. The concept involves putting all folded cards in PLO back in the deck, thus eliminating the value of holecard sharing by players who have folded. On the surface, this sounds good. However, it totally breaks the game of PLO, which is largely dependent upon reads as to what cards are both held by in-hand opponents AND folded cards by opponetns out of the hand!

I'll give you an example.

Say you have AA78 rainbow, and you are pretty sure an opponent also has AA in their hand, based upon their preflop play. The board comes 965 with two spades, and you don't have the ace of spades. If you push the other AA off, you can be somewhat confident that the ace of spades is out, and therefore you can put pressure on oppoennts with two spades, whom you know do not have the nut flush draw! If that folded ace goes back in the deck, then it can pop out on the turn or river, and now anyone with the king-spades draw knows they have the nuts.

So this is terrible. You simply can't shuffle back in folded cards, as it ruins the reads regarded which cards were folded!



But the bigger problem here is what the statement does NOT say. They still will not commit to -- or even discuss -- the bizarre decision they made awhile back to suppress locations on each account. Players used to be able to see which countries their opponents were from, making it easier to identify potential bots. That's not the case anymore, and ACR won't explain why that was taken away, nor why they won't put it back.

Until ACR puts these locations back -- or gives a reasonable explanation why they're gone -- they're not serious about stopping bots.

Reshuffle plo is a choice you can play. You can play at non shuffle tables. I would never play the reshuffel if they make it exclusively shuffle omaha I am done. They have other issues I have concerns about which are way worse then reshuffle tables.

ACR looks to be following the same trajectory as Lock Poker.

Something I recently noticed.

A few years ago, when Joey Ingram got on ACR's ass. They came up with an "open door" type of policy where they openly shared the "Banned Accounts, how much they confiscated, and even the screen names of who got refunded and how much.

When this whole bot ring thing came up, I had went to the website and was able to see that they hadn't banned (publicly) any bots in close to a year, therefore they hadn't refunded any money per their policy in over a year.

Something had sparked my interest in this list again today, and I went looking for it, and couldn't find it. I went to their twitter and found the below post, clicked on the link...."PAGE NOT FOUND"

https://www.winningpokernetwork.com/banned-accounts/

It appears they have taken down the ability to see the banned accounts and what players were affected/refunded.

It is still in their policy that they refund (up to $25k) per banned account, but how do we know what accounts are banned?

https://americascardroom.eu/poker-cu...ame-integrity/

BUMP

ACR released an update today.

Lo and behold, they finally put the country location display back into the software. This was removed awhile back for unknown reasons, which infuriated players because it made it more difficult to determine which opponents were bots. Prior to this info being removed, it was observed that there were a ton of suspected bots from Belarus and Kazakhstan.

So this is a positive development.

Is it a sign that ACR is taking the botting seriously?

Not necessarily.

Note that they have not clamped down on the Poker King skin, which is suspected of being the gateway for most of these eastern European bots.

Given that Poker King manages the KYC (know your customer) process for its own players, it is very easy for bots to get onto ACR, with little-to-no real verification done. ACR needs to get control of the Poker King situation if they want to claim to be getting serious about bots.

Some people have stated that bot networks can simply VPN into the system, and the country display doesn't matter. I disagree. VPNs are relatively easy to detect. I even detect them on this forum. If ACR wanted to, they could take over the verification from skins like Poker King, do a strict KYC process for new users, and aggressively detect VPNs. That would greatly reduce the botting.

Will they do this? I'm guessing from the priorities of the CEO, they probably won't:

https://twitter.com/wpn_ceo/status/1764249713518194692

My remark this morning is getting about 50% of the likes as the original ACR post, despite much less exposure.

I'm only half joking, though.

https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...27254076363150

Here's the info about Dwan's controversy, in case you're wondering: https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...t-of-big-money