odgovor od starsa
Hello Andrej,
Thank you for your email. Your email was escalated to me as a member of the dedicated PokerStars bot mitigation team.
PokerStars is aware of recent discussions regarding bots on various online poker forums, and we agree that they are a serious challenge to online poker operators.
We recognise that these recent discussions have arisen as a result of allegations at other online poker sites. Such specific issues are a matter for those other sites, and PokerStars has no comment on those specific incidents.
Instead, let us again confirm that the use of automated players (bots) is not tolerated at PokerStars. We prohibit such activity because we believe poker is a game that must be played by humans - humans making decisions, in a battle against other humans.
To detect bots, PokerStars has developed a database that contains a great deal of information purpose-built to determine whether an account is being operated by a human or not. This database includes detailed analysis of how players interact with the PokerStars software on a fundamental technical level. We use our experience in this area to profile various users, and to then make an informed judgment on whether they are using prohibited software.
We note that your email raised the possibility of PokerStars collaborating with our competitors on bot detection. While we appreciate your point of view on this matter, we do not believe that our bot detection would be improved by working closely with other operators. While there may be some short-term benefits to sharing such information, there are also substantial and fundamental long-term costs to such efforts. Such costs may undermine the fundamental operation of our bot detection efforts, and they include:
a) PokerStars wishes to maintain the high degree of trust that we can place in the data that we collect on this issue. Involving third-party operators may place this trust at risk. We need to gather such information ourselves because we need to be able to rely upon it's technical accuracy in court when we confiscate money from bot operators.
b) Many of our techniques to detect bots are valuable because they are confidential. Releasing such information to others may directly undermine our efforts to keep such information secure from those who may wish to use such data to operate bots themselves.
In addition to the bot-detection-specific reasons outlined above, security mechanisms operated by competitors in a free market removes the incentive for operators to further contribute to research and development.
We do not believe that there are any "quick fixes" to the fundamental issue of bot detection by online poker operators. PokerStars believes that the way to combat bots is for each operator to invest in the tools, procedures, policies and people to do it properly. PokerStars has made substantial investments in these areas (even hiring various individuals from online poker communities such as Two Plus Two who have a good understanding of these issues) and is continuing to invest appropriately.
If there is a particular PokerStars account that you believe might be a bot, then we encourage you to send further details, including the user ID and the reason you suspect the player of being a bot, to support@pokerstars.com at your convenience. In the meantime, we will continue to work proactively to identify and take appropriate action against those that seek to break our rules on this important issue.
Please let me know if you need further assistance.
Regards,
