My 4-Month Battle with WPT Global Over a Massive (130+) Bot Ring

Great work man. Keep fighting the good fight

Congrats,

Out of curiousity, your reports on these bots.. was this simply saying "these players play very alike, they might be bots, please look into it" or do you add comprehensive reports on these players (stats play time etc)

If its the first than anyone who is suspicious about bots can easily undertake action.
If its the latter. Did you ever made these reports public so other players in bot-infested sites could use it a template for reporting bots successfully?

Hi Bob

Thanks a lot for the fight and effort to make games fair. Im glad you had a positive experience at the end.

Could you please tell why did you decide not to say the exact amounts you received?
Do you follow the state of the games and are you planning on playing on WptGlobal again?

Thank you

Although glad for you, for me as someone who played and is playing these games this continues to be very shady.

“Identify gaps in our detection system” feels more like: you have to go public if you ever want to receive even a reply from us 😀

There were 2 very short announcements recently.
About bots banned with a very limited and strange list of bots.
And what’s forbidden to do and use cause WptGlobal has the best ever security 😀

At the same time, new accounts keep showing up with similar nitty playing styles, custom pictures, playing 1 table. It’s not that obvious like it was few months ago but I am very confident that the games are still full of bots.
And while it’s just 1-2 bots per table. The influx of new accounts is getting ridiculous. It’s literally promoted to regulars to make a new account and avoid a “2 pro per table rule”.
And when you have so many new accounts how can you even know are they bots or not?

Meanwhile, emails are not answered by WptGlobal security team which unfortunately in my opinion makes only sense if they are totally incapable or they are behind house bots, or both.

Not to **** only on WptGlobal the situation is definitely better than few months ago but it’s still far away from clean and fair games.

Sorry to hijack your thread Bob and once again thank you for your huge effort, I know how annoying it can be.

Hopefully things will move in the positive direction.

I had to track them manually. I wrote down their names, estimated the number of hands they played based on my own hourly average, and recorded their stats. Since WPT Global doesn't provide hand histories, I believe this is the only way to build a comprehensive report without breaching the Terms of Service.

Here are some of the main red flags I was tracking:

• Accounts playing for 12-48 hours straight without a break.

• Multiple accounts with identical stats, betting patterns, and even the same profile pictures.

• suspiciously new accounts playing with nearly identical strategies.

• All buying in with 100bbs only rebuying when busting and running it up to sometime over 1000bbs

• Single tabling

While this process required a significant effort, I want to be fair and state that I'm satisfied with the final outcome. WPT Global ultimately did the right thing, and I'm happy to move forward.

I chose not to disclose the specific amount because my case was "exceptional", and I didn't want to mislead people into thinking they would get a similar reward for their reports.

To quote their email to me directly:

"For the sake of transparency, this level of compensation is exceptional and reflects the unique circumstances of this case and how it was initially handled. While we deeply value all player reports, this should not be considered standard compensation for future submissions."

As for playing, I've only had a few sessions here and there recently. I am sticking to lower stakes like 2/4/8 and below for now and will not be touching 5/10/20+ until I see clear proof that they have done more to regulate the app-based games(WePoker, PokerKing). For example: stricter verification (KYC), blocking emulators, adding a week withdraw wait for new accounts(5k hands and less) and actively detecting and banning HUD users.

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I know that at higher stakes especially, you have to deal with private groups using Mass Data Analysis (MDA), HUD stats, notes and players bypassing the '2 pros per table' rule via the app or bots(hopefully less now) when I can't even get hand history's, notes. With some players having this massive unfair advantage, it's not worth it for me currently. Just banning the bots isn't enough; they will keep coming back as long as the KYC process for the apps remains flawed(unless updated recently).

I am happy that they are taking responsibility by cracking down on bots, updating their bot detection, and reimbursing people. Knowing they will take these situations seriously and compensate players does provide some peace of mind. However, much more needs to be done before I can fully regain trust in the integrity of the games. It's a good start, but their future actions will show how committed they truly are. An update from them stating they have worked with the apps and blocked emulators or enforced stronger KYC for the apps would be a huge step in the right direction.

Thanks for a detailed reply.

I personally think it’s matter off will rather than a technical thing when it comes to detecting and eliminating bots on WPTG. It’s both of course but until you are almost totally ignoring your players (customers) emails/reports no system or implementation can help I would say.
In fact, it’s super annoying and demotivating to deal with support/integrity team when trying to report bots/cheaters.
Should be the opposite :(
If they change that I would be pretty confident we are on a good track.
Until then I would say that nothing much has changed yet, they fixed it a bit and covered the problem but didn’t solve the core of the issue.

Good news.

After months of staying away from WPT, I decided to come back and see if anything has actually changed. Sadly, the site is still full of bots and colluders.

Also, I received a $100 refund, even though cheaters took thousands of dollars from me.

Hi. Could you explain a little more about what happens at higher limits? Can you still use the HUD in real time today, as you could last year?

I got nothing 😊

Got the exact same 'several locked, months to investigate' stall – anyone get paid yet? Here's my email.