PokerStars Investigation Decides Tournament Runner Up Did Not Use A Bot

PokerStars Investigation Decides Tournament Runner Up Did Not Use A Bot, But Suspicions Persist

PokerStars has concluded an investigation into the strange behavior of a player in its Turbo Championship of Online Poker. The player, a Russian with the handle “IvanHaldi,” was suspected of being a bot after he or she failed to respond to an official deal offer to split winnings with Finnish opponent “LuckboxStami.”

In the end, PokerStars decided IvanHaldi was human, but also noted that it could not be 100% certain.

Suspicions are based on the thought that the interaction, which took place over chat box, was completely ignored by IvanHaldi. PokerStars representative “HostMatthieM” had offered an official deal in chat to evenly split the remaining pot between both players, who would walk away with some $40,000 each. LuckboxStami quickly typed “I accept,” but IvanHaldi did not respond at all.

Staff made many attempts to reach IvanHaldi, even calling his phone number registered on the PokerStars site. Their efforts to contact IvanHaldi took almost an hour. “Seems obvious he is not a human,” chatted LuckboxStami. “Maybe PokerStars security will do something about it later.”

Eventually, LuckboxStami agreed to continue play without concluding the deal. Upon resuming the game, IvanHaldi played his next move nearly immediately.

The tournament ended with LuckboxStami winning over IvanHaldi outright, which earned them $48,042. The subsequent PokerStars investigation could find no evidence that IvanHaldi was a bot, but nor could they discover the reason’s behind the player’s chat silence.

PokerStars Communications Team member Michael Josem later released a statement on the issue. “PokerStars has investigated this account for possible use of prohibited software and we are confident that the tournament was not played by a bot, and that the gameplay decisions were made by a human being.” Josem claimed the company had investigated using five different “bot-detection tools,” including “scanning for prohibited third party software running in conjunction with the PokerStars client,” “recording hand histories for analysis,” and “conducting real-time Turing tests during play.”

“Currently, we don’t have an explanation for why the player didn’t join in discussions for a deal, and, in accordance with our normal reviews, our investigations will continue until we are comfortable with the activity on this account,” wrote Josem.