Partypoker provided its monthly security update on Wednesday, disclosing that it banished just sixteen bot accounts from its tables in September 2019. Thirteen of them were on the global “dot com” site, while the other three were on the ring-fenced “dot eu” version of the online poker room.
On the dot com end, $9,338 was confiscated from the accounts. €3,368 ($3,705) was seized from the dot eu accounts. Breaking that down further, that is about $718 per dot com account and €1,123 ($1,235) per dot eu account. This does not necessarily mean that the three accounts on the dot eu site were better than those on the dot com, that they were able to take more money per account. It might mean that, but those numbers are just the money that was confiscated from the accounts. We do not know how much the account owners had already transferred out of the accounts. All things considered, that is not a lot of money to see in an online poker account. When I played, I played for very low stakes and would have a few hundred dollars in an account at any given time.
This is the smallest number of bots shut down by partypoker since it began reporting its statistics earlier this year. The previous low mark was 42 bot accounts in May.
It is an interesting contrast to August in which 48 bot accounts were deleted. That’s three times the number of accounts of September, but the money seized was magnitudes larger. A whopping $148,668 was taken from 36 dot com accounts and €29,495 ($32,445) was seized from dot eu accounts.
August’s money figures were the largest of any individual month so far. The only total that beats it is the first one of $734,852, which was for December 2018 through March 2019 combined. Considering how high that number was, chances are at least one of those four months was bigger than September.
“The site continues to invest in resources aimed at safeguarding the safety of its players, spearheaded by a specialist Poker Fraud Team comprising a collection of former poker professionals whose duty is to investigate suspicious activity and aid partypoker in ridding the site of unscrupulous accounts,” said partypoker in a blog post.
Players are also encouraged to report any suspicious activity.
The online poker industry has been tussling with bots for as long as poker has been around. Bots are programs that play online poker in place of a human being. They have to be programmed well – a crap bot isn’t going to win money – but if they are, they have a significant advantage over humans. Bots never go on tilt, get tired, or forget to carry the one. They can play and play and play and as long as they can grind out a small win rate, they will be profitable in the long-run.
Online poker rooms have been criticized for talking a big game against bots while at the same time accepting them because they fill tables and create action. Fortunately, it looks like partypoker is serious about stopping them as much as possible.
