Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
I was disappointed in the Joey video.
I was hoping he would present some numbers, hand histories, or at least SOMETHING proving his assertions.
Oddly, he called out certain screen names, yet didn't provide even one hand history, despite claiming to have spent countless hours studying and observing these players.
Huh?
I'm not saying that Joey is wrong. I trust his feel of the situation more than I trust the shady elements behind ACR, but let's not jump too much on the bandwagon until we sort this out further.
I will discuss this more on radio on Wednesday. Hopefully Joey will release more by then.
As johnnysprinkles said above, Joey is making so many different accusations that it's a bit tough to take them all seriously, as they are all separate.
Superusing, colluding, and botting don't necessarily go together. Collusion and botting can (because those are indicative of lax security, plus bots can collude), but superusing is entirely different. A superuser does not need to collude or use bots, as he already has a tremendous advantage.
Yes, it's possible all three are happening, but honestly Joey's claims about the colluding and botting sound more credible than his claims of superusing.
We're going to need to see some evidence before concluding much more.
To answer johnnysprinkles' other question, YES, botting is cheating, and is far worse than using HUDs. And yes, at least at low-mid stakes, bots are big winners, especially if they are sharing hole card information with one another. Even "fair playing" bots will typically crush low and mid stakes, due to volume, a tough-to-exploit style, and lack of fatigue/emotion/human error.
I should also point out that bots have long been a problem on the smaller and mid-sized networks, dating back many years.
I proved back in 2009 that there were certain bots routinely in the limit holdem games on Bodog, but nothing was done. In fact, when I took countermeasures by tricking one of the bots into playing more than 80 consecutive hands against me where I got the button every time, the bot operator complained and Bodog threatened to ban me if I did it again. I spoke to one of the higher managers there, who basically told me that I had "no proof" it was a bot (lol), and that I had no right to exploit that glitch no matter who the opponent was. I asked him how any high volume, winning player could ever let another regular winner (me) take the button against him 80 consecutive times, and he didn't have an answer for that. Back in those days, everyone had screen names, so there wasn't even the explanation that he didn't realize he was playing someone competent. I was a high volume limit holdem regular there and everyone on the site knew I was one of the top winners there.