Reddit Helped GGPoker Get Rid Of Cheaters In Rush & Cash But With Nuance

How Apologia87 Identifies Cheaters In Rush & Cash

As per Apologia87, they understand that an account isn’t a real player and just chasing leaderboard’s prizes on NL10, NL25 and NL100 by the following signs:

1. They always have the same flags. All accounts newly made to chase rake races have one flag from this list: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and (possibly) Thailand.
2. New random accounts don’t immediately jump into a rake race and grind 18 hours.
3. You don’t see any of these names repeated, ever. It means, while regulars — such as Kalthor, Rake2High, A Selimhanov, Capta1nj1e, Sergey Malyshev, Zzz6666666 and others — show up in the leaderboard regularly, suspicious accounts (bots or just cheaters) disappear rather quickly, after winning something in rake races.

Apologia87 literally calls their presence in Rush&Cash an infestation because there are too many of them to count and they replace one another regularly.

The most concerning things for players there are that these cheaters, in Apologia87’s words:

• Know who other players are and their history and play styles but we don’t know exactly who they are. We have to relearn their patterns, make new fresh notes EVERY DAY.
• Have PVI reset and possibly even deposit bonuses etc bc account is fresh with zero history. This gives them a massive psychological advantage to push through any bad variance to take top ranks.
• Play for 16-18 hours straight daily.

To back up his conclusions and suspicions, Apologia87 also shared screenshots of the 10 consecutive days before his post — we took three of them as an example.

What GGPoker Decided to Do Against Rush & Cash Cheaters

Eight hours after Apologia87’s post, the GGPokerOfficial account on Reddit answered them:

GGPoker also asked them to continue providing “reports with back up evidence” to be reviewed by the security team on a priority basis.

Why Poker Players aren’t Really Satisfied with GG’s Approach

According to commentaries on Reddit, these punishments and unclear measures for cheaters do not help at all.

As dabuwa87 described it a day after conversation between Apologia87 and GGPokerOfficial on Reddit happened:

“You can look today in the rnc pool and see again new accounts with fresh pvi and bot/reg hud stats who goes for the leaderboard money. They will cash out. And never play again. After that tomorrow new accounts with fresh pvi and reg stats will join again and do the same Everyday Everyday regs get cheated in the race by these new fresh accounts who are bots or humans don’t matter

No way everyday 10 new people on every stake around the world stand up and play poker like a solver and go for leaderboards. Everyday

And i know a lot of well known rnc regs are posting this kind of stuff for month already to your security team

It’s not enough to ban these accounts AFTER  a report AFTER they already won leaderboard money and cheated the pools.”

Gew-Growth3128 shared concerns that the room’s support is not really interested in resolving issues because after their reassurance of the topic starter nothing changed:

“This is such an obvious cheating going on every limit for many months. No chance GG Security is so incompetent. They are 100% aware of what is going on their site, they just don’t care.”

Moreover, four days after this discussion started, Gew-Growth3128 also noticed another wave of cheaters:

What Players Think Can Be Done to Manage the Situation

Despite collective frustration about this situation, a lot of players not only criticise GGPoker but also share their ideas about possible ways to  sort out the problem.

qixianyang suggests GGPoker to restrict playtime for new accounts in Rush&Cash games:

“For example, limit daily playtime to 8 hours initially. After one week, increase the daily limit to 16 hours. After two weeks, allow daily playtime to exceed 24 hours. Let the cost of cheating be more expensive than what they can get.”

ErrorLoadingUsername alters this suggestion a little by adding:

Apologia87 assumes that the only thing the room’s security can do for sure is tightening up ID check ups:

“You need to fix the issue at its root problem, which is low security/verification and not taking the issue seriously enough to stay on top of it.

Another option is to manually check LB every day (takes 20 min max for one security guy) and just outright auto ban anyone in the top 4 who has a fresh account — and then require them for extra security verifications such as photo holding ID etc.”

Finally, Alutaps02 shared his advice to fellow players on what they can do to help themselves:

“I am just a low stakes player (and very novice and close to average skill). That means I know I’m not gonna make a living doing this. But my advice to similar players is to ignore the fish points, match bonus, and leaderboards. Just play your best and have fun, while trying not to lose a bunch of cash. I always assumed that leaderboard leaders were playing at least 4-8 tables for at least 10-12 hours a day. They are not playing poker but the site itself.”