Botting/RTA and Legal Action

Lots of corporate secrets would come in public court during the legal proceedings. Also it spotlights an issue the sites are incentivized to not spotlight.

Probably because there are no laws for rta users to break that sites could use to sue them. I mean there are no global internet poker laws that players follow.

If there actually are then I had no idea lol.

Because the sites would look crooked when they were required to show actual proof and either could not or effectively also proved they knew about and allowed the fraud. Because far more of this than the sites want to admit is either the site itself or individuals at the site operating for themselves doing the cheating.

When the site is hosted in Malta and the offender is in Belarus or Turkmenistan, legal enforcement is going to be complicated.
/thread

Ten years ago some swedes were prosecuted and convicted for running bots on swedish gov owned site svenskaspel. After appealing the verdict it was struck down in higher court and they were freed of the charges (it was simply deemed not illegal to do).

And that's the swedish government prosecuting swedes for botting on swedish owned site.

Trying to do so internationally is probably not remotely worth the effort for sites.

The sites want the bots, most likely have bots of their own playing, and could care less about cheaters as long as poker players continue to play on their site. And poker players continue to play on their site......

Imagine being in the game for 20 years making you atleast close to 40 and still thinking like that 😃

/thread indeed, you said it all. Also, not only is the site in one place and the offender in another, but the victim is in a third location.

The subject of jurisdiction came up somewhat frequently in the wake of the AP and UB cheating scandals. Trying to prove to a jury (or a bench) what went wrong was gonna be hard enough. Figuring out the proper venue was another challenge altogether.

I remember poker reporter Court Harrington asking that very question to Tokwiro COO Paul Leggett during an interview (PokerRoad Radio, September 2009). Leggett had a sizable list of "persons of interest" but was not willing to release the names unless forced to as a matter of public record, such as a trial. Harrington asked Leggett where such a trial could possibly take place. There really wasn't a good answer for that question, and probably still isn't.

I have been playing poker close to 20 years and work in online gambling for close to 10.

i can tell you that there are multiple types of operators.

group one which is when it comes to poker basically only pokerstars tries its best to keep the games clean

group two doesn't necessarily do anything shady themselves but dont really care about anything but short term results and the bottom line. they dont care about botting and cheating as long as it doesnt hurt the bottom line in meaningful way.

the third group are rogue operators. unlicensed or a worthless pseudo license. I cant say for sure that they are running bots but they cheat and steal. I am more familiar with casinos than card rooms but i have seen it all. Fake games, fake licenses, stolen funds stolen data.

Bots pay rake just like the rest of us

they prob pay more, no table selecting and infinite stamina

There was a case in england where someone who was multi accounting on the same table and took alot of money at these highstakes games went to prison.