Author here. Yes, you can still make money in online Poker. Its not as juicy as it was and rake is very high these days making micro stakes unbeatable. Moreover, highest stakes usually run live and access is gated. The old 2000s dream of grinding from micros to become a high stake player is no longer possible.
Regd. RTA and bots, they have always existed and constantly keep getting better. Its a cat and mouse game between websites and cheaters which will continue
That just looks to me like a list of rules with vague promises of “sophisticated proprietary software, trust us bro” enforcing the rules. Who knows for sure how much of that is actually implemented? We have to take the company’s word for it.
I don’t doubt some of that cheat detection exists, but some of it also seems pretty fantastic.
A approximately optimal bot would probably need 10s of thousand of hands to be identified as a bot. I mean, the node chance weights are not the same between different bots for the state nodes. The state is probably even compressed in different ways. The variance is way too high. It is not like chess.
The “sophisticated proprietary software, trust us bro” is probably mainly used as a way to not do payouts. Online casinos are really shady.
Winning in poker is about identifying "fish". Being 0.001% better than the other bots at the table wont beat the house.
GG is doing not even basic modeling of theoretically possible vs actual win rates to identify outliers (cheaters..)
I'd say that the assertion that these "named pro-players" are doing anything to ensure a game seems like utter PR fluff nonsense, esp given they have 0 credentials / skills in data science / analysis etc.
Yes I have seen the thread. Catching a player using just the winrate is hard. 9k hands is peanuts and some of the assumptions in that thread (like a 53% VPIP player must have 0bb/100 winrate) are slightly far fetched.
I know for a fact that GG has a GTO detection algorithm. If you play too close to GTO/optimal strategy they investigate. Lot of RTA folks got caught this way.
Jason Koon and Fedor Holz are part of the team which manually reviews statistical anomalies. Its stupid to think they dont know about the data side of Poker. Moreover, a ton of Poker players end up becoming traders and data scientists. There is a lot of skill overlap.
I agree that some of the stuff is PR nonsense but to dismiss their entire anti fraud operation is just stupid. They are literally the best in the world at this.
GGPoker's anti fraud detection system: https://www.natural8in.com/security-ecology-agreement
Remember this is the public stuff and they work with professional players to do a lot of behind the scene stuff to ensure a fair game.