Pokersites and Security

Remarks

1. IPoker, Bovada/Bodog, 888: supported by Shanky Bonusbots. Lots of people botting there naked without any stealth and insane “human-like” hours. But be careful. Even a bot-friendly site like 888 will ban you if you play 450 SNG each day like one of our users did recently.
2. Cereus (former Absolute and Ultimate): the scandal casino with the worst reputation on earth. Bots welcome.
3. OnGame: we once knew a guy who ran a farm there, 55 acounts, NL 10 SSS, singletabling (because his hopper was not able to run more than one table), playing all accounts naked round the clock. It took six weeks until he got busted.
4. Winning Network: no bans known
5. Prima Network: the only ban we ever heard of happened after a long holiday (bot turned off).
6. MicroGaming: occasional bans
7. CakePoker: quite bot-friendly. They disallow PokerTracker-support and have anonymized hand-histories to protect both fish and bots. When they got supported by Shanky BonusBots several years ago they asked Egor not to advertise that fact in public and get called “Site X” there, but hundreds of botters were able to play there naked until cake had to be unsupported for technical reasons. However they ban OpenHoldem botters (even with basic stealth), maybe because these bots are fewer and more sophisticated.
   
   
8. Merge: supported by Shanky in the past until a mass-ban out of the blue sky.
9. Party: supposed to be nearly as strict as PokerStars back in 2006 when Party got 70% of the Poker market. However reports about bans became very rare in the mean-time and more and more people report good successes.
10. FullTilt: always considered “yellow” in the early botting-years of WinHoldem. Stealth was recommended for users of OpenHoldem / WinHoldem, but botting was possible, whereas hundreds of Bonusbotters could play naked for several years, just like at Cake. Then out of the blue sky FullTilt banned all BonusBotters, Black Friday happened, the owners of FullTilt ran away with their customers money and PokerStars bought this casino. Strange enough: botting at FullTilt is still doable.
11. PokerStars: “red”; always strictly anti-bot. Botting there requires sophisticated stealth, though we know several people who bot there, each one with a highly individual self-made setup. If you are a newbie who runs a bot at PokerStars naked they will warn you once. If you try to hide a bot or get caught a second time they will ban you and seize all your funds. Botting there is recommended only for the brave and very experienced

Rules of Thumb

• Choose small sites. They usually don’t have the man-power and know-how to go for a bot-hunt and they need every customer, including bots that provide traffic for the real players.
• Choose large networks. This advice might seem to contradict the first one, but large networks usually consist of several (and sometimes dozens) of small sites that share the player-pool. Each site is mostly interested in its own business; they don’t have much man-power and know-how either; and the communication and cooperation between these sites is often non-existent.
• Choose sites that are supported by “ready-to-go” poker-bots (i.e. Shanky BonusBots, as WinHoldem and OPI are dead and all other commercials we know about are plain scams). The reasoning is simple: if other people — mostly with limited computer-skills — can run a bot naked, then you should be safe too. Exceptions exist, see the list above.
• Stay away from large monolithic sites. Simple fact: PokerStars, FullTilt and PartyPoker have the man-power and the know-how to go for a bot-hunt. They don’t need the traffic nor the rake, but they have much to lose in case of a **itstorm on twoplustwo.com. So these sites care, some a bit more, some a bit less. Stay away as a beginner.