Superuser Caught on GGPoker - "MoneyTaker69" Thread
User "MoneyTaker69" is alleged to be superusing on GG Poker.
In December, Moneytaker won at 90bb/100 on GG Poker in 8,900 hands playing 53% VPIP. Soon after, he binked a $150 Sunday MTT for $47,586 while playing an extremely volatile strategy, which aroused a lot of suspicion. GG Poker has acknowledged the situation privately and is preparing to address it, but it's important for the public to know immediately due to the significance of superusing.
The Results
The following results graph comes from Smarthand, a site that tracks online poker results. MoneyTaker won at 90bb/100 in December playing 53/17.
Typically, a player with this VPIP/PFR ratio would be in the -50bb/100 range. Even if we were impossibly generous and said he was breakeven, this run would be a statical anomaly. For a -50bb recreational? Impossible.
Here is a primedope simulation of the probability of a breakeven player having this run.
The following is a simulation of possible runs for a player with a given winrate using primedope's variance calculator. The light blue line at the top of the graph represents the "Best" run, which is the luckiest run a person could have in 1,000 trials.
This is a -50bb player playing 9000 hands. Their luckiest run is around -10 buyins. Mokeytaker won 77 buy-ins.
Additionally, MoneyTaker won a $150 GG Masters Sunday MTT, which is a big open field tournament. This makes the possibility of chip dumping or targeting specific players with a virus much less likely.
The Hands
The following hands were collected by various users as examples of likely foul play.
How is he cheating?
Based off his play, the most natural explanation is that he can see the cards. He rarely puts in money significantly behind or calls the river with the worst hand. Also, his winrate is so high that RTA could not possibly explain it.
It's unclear how he's able to see others' cards, and it's possible he's not the only one exploiting a glitch in the system. A post on 2+2 highlighted a group of suspicious accounts that played for brief stints and won for >30bb/100, which is particularly difficult on GG due to their rake structure.
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...
There is no clear evidence that the players highlighted in the above post are superusing, but it's not unreasonable to suspect that this could be a larger issue at scale if done by hackers that want to be less obvious than running >50% VPIP.
Hacker Group
"MoneyTaker" is a hacker group. It's unclear if this account is in any way associated with them or if it's just incidental, but worth mentioning.
What's Next?
As a community, we await GG Poker's response. I'm confident they'll do the right thing and share everything they know about this incident shortly.
There cannot be any revolutionary math stats technique here that's gona add any insight, and I'll say why.
When you combine an insane statistical anomaly, with observerations that are completely independent of the math-like someone calling down with jack high, no amount of pure math is going to beat common sense, and basic reasoning here, and some simple simulation/statistics.
Yes there can be someone thats struck by lightning 100x a day their whole life but it's more likely there's some reason i
Except i did post the statistical method. See this post: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...
MM
So this is what I have wondered since the Pot Ripper days.
In manufacturing, we use statistics for continuous monitoring of processes. Certain (out of control) “signals” drive actions. We have a series of actions for that process we call an OCAP or out of control action plan. The plan is appropriate for the process. But there are 8 generally accepted “rules” all based on STandard Deviation.
In banking transactions are monitored and certain signals drive security actions. I’m not familiar with exa
And this is exactly my point. I suspect that the main reason sites don't, as far as I know, do much of this is that the important managers of the site aren't familiar with these ideas. If they were, much of this stuff would be flagged for further review.
Mason
Oh right forgot that all poker sites are supposed to check their techniques with you. As far as you know = you don't know anything.
You're right, I don't know. But I strongly suspect that if they understood and implemented the right statistical techniques, there's a good chance this thread wouldn't exist.
Mason
All of the people making fun of the book promotion and secret stats knowledge are well justified in doing so. Also whats up with people who sign their name at the end of every post. Your name is already visible in the profile.
Mason is in his 70’s and is about as old school poker as you can get. It’s ok to disagree or whatever but how about you show a little respect bro, you’re being bit a d1ck.
My 2cents on the topic is; blatant cheating occurred.
So far this scandal is sweeping under the rug quite nicely for GG Poker it seems...
I might be overly optimistic by saying this: not necessarily.
The AP/Potripper scandal also took a while to really gain wider traction. If memory serves, there were suspicions well before Marco Johnson finished second to Potripper on that 10-high call. And even after that, the story developed slowly. Sure, there was a hand history on 2+2 soon after, but it was at least a week before Marco received what became an incriminating file. Plus, Nat Arem, Snagglepuss, et al took at least a few days to dismantle said file.
I can't find the old 2+2 forum archives, but this is still around to illustrate the spotlight on the subject:
• Steven Levitt's first post about the Potripper scandal (Sept. 20, 2007): https://freakonomics.com/2007/09/how-not...
• Levitt's second post (Oct. 17, 2007): https://freakonomics.com/2007/10/the-abs...
That right there indicates more a full month from the Potripper call against CrazyMarco (12 Sept 2007) to the second Levitt article, the KGC "investigation," Todd Witteles' phone conversations, major media attention, etc.
TL;DR it might be swept under the rug in the same way AP thought they had buried the Potripper issue with their "we found no evidence" post a week after the pivotal tournament. So the same could happen here. Fingers crossed, sir.
Read this page from them if you want a good laugh. How has the PIC not issued a statment about this case? Wait, how have they not done ANYTHING since this was announced?
[QUOTE=GG PIC]We are actively seeking to expand our PIC Voting Members for diverse representation and to maintain independence and neutrality. Please get in touch with GGPoker or Jason Koon if you wish to apply to be a PIC Voting Member.[/QUOTE]
Seems like they need a statistical analysis expert on the team - anybody know one?
They know about behavioral analytics AI. It's just better for business for them to funnel money into marketing and hire lots of influencer shills. No one is depositing money because GG has a new advanced anti cheating AI but they might join up if some shill tells them to.
yeah i think this gg cheating councel needs its own thread, they do nothing, fedor busy flirting on game of gold, jason got a baby, they all too rich to care, we need a proper councel, not some known pros just because they are well known and win at poker, doesn't auto make them good at anything to do with looking into cheats/scandals
The sites won't do what they really need to do.
1. Hire former prosecutors and former high quality investigators, who;
2. Understand poker; and
3. Give them the latitude to engage (hire) the experts necessary to any investigation (statisticians, programmers, etc.).
There's nothing here that's unsolvable with the right people doing the work.
Hiring poker names is foolish window dressing. The best people for this work are people you've never heard of.
Can anyone tell me how these people open so many fake accounts? Even depositing and withdrawing?
Yet GG want proof of address and bank statements from me. How do they get around that security check?
Or do they all VPN from Unregulated countries? So GG don’t care?
I'm not fully caught up with the thread yet, but I just wanted to point out one thing: if this means that GG loses its dominant market position, it was likely the best thing that could happen to online poker.
What alternative site do you see taking the leadership position that represents an improvement for online poker?
GG may be able to improve its security and clean up this sort of thing. However, if it turns out there were a lot of superusers or they were connected to insiders, then it might be a problem. I doubt they don't clean it up and maintain their market position.
What alternative site do you see taking the leadership position that represents an improvement for online poker?
Stars obviously has a better rep than any other site. Software and interface seem lightyears ahead of other sites (except for the problems with Aurora). Of course no site is perfect ... and Stars is not an exception.
Any site with lower rake taking leadership is better.
People are paranoid that GG will somehow sweep this under the rug and allow it to continue to go on. They are going to have to take major action to clean up their games.
People are paranoid that GG will somehow sweep this under the rug and allow it to continue to go on. They are going to have to take major action to clean up their games.
Probably. Imagine another no-brainer security hole being found out after significant money is already lost. Then it may explode, and they know it.
I wonder if any of the other suspicious accounts with crazy high win-rates have any big MTT scores in the past 6 months, too bad we cant check Sharkscope… Is there another site that possibly tracks MTT scores on GG poker?
I might be overly optimistic by saying this: not necessarily.
The AP/Potripper scandal also took a while to really gain wider traction. If memory serves, there were suspicions well before Marco Johnson finished second to Potripper on that 10-high call. And even after that, the story developed slowly. Sure, there was a hand history on 2+2 soon after, but it was at least a week before Marco received what became an incriminating file. Plus, Nat Arem, Snagglepuss, et al took at least a few days to d
They were days, though, when many of the finest minds in poker were active on a forum like this and saw value in providing their thoughts and/or time to discuss a scandal like Potripper publicly.
I would imagine there is more advanced knowledge and conversation happening on this amongst midstakes+ regs with the knowledge and visibility to tease this one out, but it is happening in private discords and the likes.
I think it is highly unlikely such an exploit was only identified and used by this particular player, and I would say the presence of such an exploit and the botched response (the hacker being able to continue after a software fix was released, the attempt to bury the official statement with subsequent blogs) raise serious questions around the integrity of games on GG Poker. The compelling analysis in this thread around abnormal win rates and likely chip dumping adds to a sense of GG Poker not having the capability or interest to address game integrity issues seriously.
In my opinion, this is likely worse than the Absolute Poker event, where it was an instance of naked theft from an insider. Technical capability issues allied to an underresourced or unempowered fraud/game integrity function are much more concerning in the modern era of RTA. I just doubt that the most impactful discussion of these implications will happen in this space in 2024.
Finally, it's naive to think that pro players are blind to the trade-offs of playing on a site like GG Poker. Balancing security with the availability of action is one of the most fundamental aspects of the history of playing poker for money since its inception. It's nothing new...
Tried to summarize it all, cause #GGcare 😃
MoneyTaker69 exploited a vulnerability in the software, which made it possible for him to see the equity in real-time. He wouldnÂ’t see the hole cards of the other players, but heÂ’d always know his chance of winning the hand. Simply put, the server would know what cards the other players were holding, itÂ’d calculate the equity based on this, regardless of whether there was an all-in situation, and MoneyTaker69 would tap into this info, always knowing
To add to the ever-growing list:
- GG have still to publish any info about the incident on their local sites. In other words, they don't consider it significant enough of an incident to share the info with the wider network. It's not a huge surprise they'd try to bury it as much as possible and not make it a thing in jurisdictions where the regulators might want to look further into it (Isle of Man and Kahnawake are complete jokes and don't care about player protection).
- GG are still to publish further clarifications (realistically, it probably won't happen). It's just as much about what wasn't said. GG have not confirmed, that this is an isolated incident. They say that they "spotted abnormal game client packets", and if it was the case that server side didn't constantly make the equity available (call from client to server needed to calculate), then surely GG would be able to identify whether additional abuse has taken place? Why is there no confirmation that such hasn't happened? It could of course be the case that GG were stupid enough to constantly have equity available server side, and there would be no way to identify abuse in server logs. Or, it could be that it isn't an isolated incident and GG will sweep it under the rug.
Who is Mason?
looks like interest around this episode is rapidly disappearing, besides this thread you don't see much mention of it. The integrity council faces have all been completely silent, inexplicable huge lack of professionalism, are they that desperate to get a few more pennies from GG? GG seems to have managed to bury the scandal without much damage
Can someone post a list of PLO winners? For me GG seemed like a site impossible to win even with all the massive whales jamming no look all ins.
Main takeaway from this for me is that everyone on the GG "Poker Integrity Council" are a bunch of douchebag morons.
If there is definite evidence of money laundering the UK gambling commission need to be told. they have handed out substantial fines before to companies
