Imagine the amount of hackers smart enough not to screw up their stats or make impossible calls

« Double the size of our security team ». They will now be 2 security specialists at GG

As always with these incidents, it’s not the cheater you should be concerned about. It is the fact they were only caught because they were stupid and greedy. How much clever undetected cheating is really going on…..we will never know.

GG only made this statement when the comnunity found this out and the case started to gain popularity. It's crazy that with their security team they can't detect these things by themselves.

The "losing" at heads up is just the cheater moving money to his other accounts. Those accounts also need to be banned.

What's crazy to me is how blatant this example and the ultimatebet one in the past were. You could take somebody who is break even or a small winner at 25NL or 50NL and have them selectively superuser and they would crush and not look nearly as suspicious. I don't think this stuff is happening all the time but if we're relying on results and these crazy hands to catch this behavior you could definitely fly more under the radar.

I haven’t played online since black Friday and probably never will again. Cheaters are like roaches, if you catch one there are 100 more out there.

I'm a coder and I'd really like to understand why the thumbs up/down feature would be the attack vector here. The software must be a complete POS.

Makes you think how many are out there superusing that are smart enough to stay within a reasonable winrate percentage.

Don't worry, guys; the odds are with us that there was only one cheater.

Not surprised. GG is not a platform to be trusted for various reasons such as their TOS and how they handle cheating allegations. I wish I stopped playing on the platform before I learned the hard way. These guys are crooks and have no business trying to make poker "more like a video game". They incentivize bad action through various means and treat winning players poorly. In their own words "we don't want winning players on this platform". It's an absolute joke. I can rant for hours about the unethical, sketchy and borderline illegal things they do. Report them to the gaming commission NOW.

This gives me no faith in the technical team at GG. Not only was the all-in equity data available client-side, which is pretty crazy, but the servers allowed out-of-date client software to continue accessing the games, which is also crazy. They also apparently didn't have any ability to spot 90BB/100 profit margins with low variance without the support of online forums. This is, by itself, enough for me to not play on GG.

I accused them of this years ago with proof and they banned my account the next day

It blows my mind that any network traffic would not be encrypted.

Doug.. Just to correct you on the Potripper thing.. I know it was a long time ago.. But the reason the entire thing kicked off was because a player requested the hand history because he wanted to review his play. He was given full hand history that showed EVERY PLAYERS cards in the history report.. something that should not be possible. So this caused a major deal and everyone started looking at the stats and now knowing all hands could be seen it meant a super user account is possible.

HTF does their security not automatically flag an account with 84bb winrate??????????????? What fucken security?

Im still re-running through all the old videos from 7 years ago. Your evolution and growth are incredible. Thanks for all the content and staying true to the players for so many years.

Whats crazy is that these cheaters are all so obvious and if they were just a little smarter, they'd get away with it if they stop calling with 10 high.

This makes me question every dubious call someone has made against me on GG in the past. It is realistically unlikely that this person either was the first or even acted alone. I think they’re just the one who got caught by not being clever with their exploits (hello Robbi). It’s sad that it’s not been a level playing field and has tarnished GG for me.

I was a UB member and got burned by cheating. I quit GG when ridiculous things happened. Unless software is regulated and audited, even then I don't trust it. Live games with table cams, RFID, players using cell phones, it's all B.S. and just adds to the problem. Spending my time now with honest people.

Doug, your content is second to none. Constantly continuing to get better despite the fact that you’re already leading the field. Cheers to you, my friend 🍻

So he couldnt see the cards, but it would tell him he was a 79% favorite or whatever? Basically just as good or better than seeing the cards.

Cheating online is very rampant. Just go look at how prevalent it is with online video gaming. It’s an entire industry selling cheat software. Anyone who thinks it won’t be done with actual money involved is about as naive as it gets. Sad thing is anyone with even slightly a bit of strategy not to get caught won’t.

Thanks Doug, you have definitely helped me with my decision to not continue playing poker anywhere, even at the big casinos. You’re killing it buddy, really.

I’ve seen a few people ask about how the “thumbs up and down feature” could have been used in this exploit. My interpretation on this is as follows: When you win a hand on GG, you’re given three predetermined “emoticons” which signal you’ve won. If you fold a hand, you get some neutral ones and when you lose, you get some negative ones and the ability to congratulate the opponent. I’m guessing if the equity calculator is being determined before show-down, the emoticons that you will have available in any hand is also pre-determined; I.e either neutral (if you fold) plus one of either positive or negative and never both (since they are the two outcomes available in each hand). If you knew you have neutral or positive as your only options against another player, then I’m guessing you could just run crazy plays.

THE ROBBI PART HAD ME DEADDD. PURE BLUFF CATCHER LMAO

Loved the “Robbie” hypothesis scenario. Too funny!

This might have a massive impact on all online poker sites.

At what point in the design was sending equity data to the client considered a good option? The client needs to know about seven cards. If it wants to calculate probable equity from there then that’s fine, but the client should only ever know about seven cards, stack sizes, and bets (from which it can calculate the pot), and the pot (double check).

Wow haven’t watched yet but been on 2+2 relaying to my suspicion of unscrupulous play on GG for over a year now, along with reporting to GG customer service and getting Jack shit in response. Thank you Doug. And I’ve been playing since the original poker boom and it hasn’t felt this bad.

I love that the vulnerability was exploited by way of a completely useless feature. If only they spent more money on protecting players than they do trying to develop absolute garbage software.

Why was this vulnerability possible post-December 16th? Shouldn't GG Poker's servers detect for the most recent version and not allow non-current users? If there's a check for current version, you can't make it the same check each time. That doesn't make sense.

There's nothing shocking about this. Online poker has always been infested with cheating and it's impossible to stop it.

The way a white hat hacker group works is they participate in bounty programs where companies pay anyone who can uncover an exploit in their codebase. Alternatively, they might hack a company, show them proof that they were hacked, and then ask for payment to reveal the exploit they found.

Thanks Doug for spotlighting this. I've stopped playing online for a while now for a few reasons. I think I'll stick to getting cheated at the brick and mortar rooms. 😁

Always got bad vibes about these platforms being exploitable by hackers.

I thought we were done and over with these types of exploits more than 15 years ago! Also, GG's explanation post really makes it sound like the Windows client-side application is actually an emulator of a non-native platform to Windows, which is very concerning if that is so! Also, this makes me wonder a lot about a lot of the "crushers" on GG, and how I'll often see very poor playstyles from MTT players who are boasting six-figure career winnings on the website. In contrast, most Pokerstars/Party/888 players with six-figure career winnings on those websites are some of the best MTT players in the world.

Video games have been dealing with this same problem for over 20 years. In some sense, video games have it even worse - game clients *need* to have access to information that should remain private to the individual players. For example, other player location is important so the client can track them and smooth movement with predictive movement interpolation. Of course, because the client has the data, that's how 'wall hacks' and other similar vulnerabilities are able to be created. In the case of GG, the answer seems pretty clear - the clients should NEVER be able to access data that doesn't either directly belong to the client (like their own hole cards), or, is public information, like the runout of the board.

'It was a pure bluff catacher' ...killed me.

Interesting video. I have had my theories about ACR and either bots or certain players have access to what most likely is seeded hands, which are then decoded by the player and used exploitatively to know the flop turn river. Or maybe they just have a hud that sees my cards. Geez That said, some sites are best avoided, and as a good player, regardless, you avoid some players and move to better tables if you're losing to someone continuously.

"POOR PLAY" transitions into something totally different once someone is a super user. They just don't get it, and give away that they are acting super strange. This is where AI is going to ruin online poker. AI will mitigate its' wins and defer to some seemingly common sense moves like folding the KNOWN winner (to the SU) of pocket deuces against a jam with 5 overs, possible pocket pair, and a flush available. As a super user this is a detection spot. Call = detected cheating, FOLD = preserve the cheat. AI will add that fold the winner component, and simply be a 54%-59% winner and stay down the board from the top winner in order to continue making money. Making 3% a month on a million dollar bankroll for 200 months and net $6m is what AI will do, while this dolt made 40% for 3-4 months, and the complaints probably started 8-9 days into the account.

You think these companies don't have ghost players in there taking people's money?

Remember the movie “Catch me if you can” ? GG should hire this dude to help them build a fire wall against other hackers

Seems like Daniel Negreanu always somehow seems to just happen to be one of the top supporters of these sites that run into these kinds of issues 🤔

The reason you don’t publicly talk about an exploit until it’s patched and you’ve recouped as many of the illicit gains as you can is not to postpone the bad press. It is to A) not give the offender a chance to stash assets/ flee and more importantly B) not give other hackers an opportunity to take advantage of the same exploit while you are still vulnerable

No way its not an inside job. If not the software fucking sux! What a shitshow! GG for GG

this is so comforting: What I'm really concerned about are more sophisticated cheaters remaining inconspicuous by having realistic winrates and styles of play. just making slight adjustments here and there so you will never catch on to what they are doing.

So the all-in equity data was sent to the client before they even went all-in ? That's crazy..

When there is $ involved, there will always be someone trying to get an advantage by cheating.

Why would the all-in equity odds percentage be broadcast to the client side prior to the hand reveal any way? It would appear that this is intentionally written into the code. That's scary. So GG just blocked this single thumbs up thumbs down access vector to that information but didn't remove the that part of the code that sends the all-in equity to begin with. So to me, they didn't really fix the actual issue.

Doug being sure to be very nice to the hacker group lol. “They probably nice enough people, don’t take my KZfaq channel please!”

This feels like there’d be similar concerns to chess. If a person plays like an absolute maniac, they’d be easy to catch, but if someone just decides to play the top 10-20% of hands, and simply made good folds, they’d be able to make an ungodly amount of money and never get caught.

Their explanation makes little sense. The game servers were sending real time all-in equity to connected clients (which should obviously never happen until cards are up) and they 'hot fixed' this by patching the client software? In other words, they discovered a superuser exploit, and rather than actually fixing it by patching what data the server is willing to send the client, they left it wide open but presumably just more difficult to discover. Bizarre

Just when I thought about trying online poker again after a hiatus from the Full Tilt scam

Well that is definitely happening at ACR, the sketchiness there is through the roof

The couple times there has been a super-user caught, it has been the done by the worst poker players ever... playing in the most super-user way possible. A knowledgeable poker player would arouse no suspicion at all in their game play, and could still crush the game for millions over time. When the AP superuser was caught, he won a tourny where he saw the flop in his first 57 hands, only folding preflop on his 58th as it was raised preflop by AA.

Every time poker scandals fall to the wind, Doug comes out of nowhere to bring it all back. Never change Doug, please never change.

Amazing how they'll only refund affected players the confiscated amount. Obviously players out sooo much more. Company needs to lose money on this deal and should be sued by anyone who played against MoneyTaker. Companies love to make these mistakes and wash their hands with zero net loss.

I like how you specifically went into the key oddities e.g. the hacker is playing over 50% of hands,not three betting and still winning. This is madness on a few levels because if someone tried to play this way they would shatter their bankroll in minutes UNLESS they could see their opponents hand.

"Wasn't able to access servers or server data" ... "Was able to deduce all-in equity". Apparently all-in equity isn't server data to these guys🤔 When your thumbs up button leaks server data though... top tier programming

Top 3 Postle quotes of all time “I played so much online poker that I developed a blood clot the length of my entire leg” “I crushed the best online players such as Tom Dwan. Just ask him” “I’m one of the best poker players in the world and I’m no longer afraid to say it”

The T9cc call reminds me of Robbi's J high call on HCL, but given she has her defenders and no cheating was ever found (how hard anyone looked is anyone's guess), I would not exactly call it "obvious cheating". (although you will never convince me that cheating did not occur)

I always love corporate company lines because they always sound so soulless. Like what they wrote went through four drafts before it was approved by the legal department, they take no real responsibility and we're supposed to take them at their word that it won't happen again. When the community is able to out these scandals before they do doesn't help matter any. It reminds you that huge companies always act in a reactive vs proactive state. 'Yeah the working conditions were unsafe and everybody from managers to entry level employees knew it, complaints and concerns were filed ... but Bob had to die first ... but we're sorry and we've fixed the situation now.' Oh ok.

Thanks for the video, good to raise awareness about this. So how can one see all the hand histories of a specific player? Is this information online from everyone that plays on GG or how does that work?

This is not a super-user situation. This was a client-side hack.

Shocking that the sketchy Chinese site was vulnerable.

What about the people that lost money to this person? Did they get a rebate?

If you’re a serious poker player and want to protect your money. NEVER PLAY ONLINE FOR LARGE STAKES. Play online for fun and to stay sharp at lower stakes, and only play large LIVE. WAY TOO MUCH INCENTIVE FOR YOU TO GET CHEATED PERIOD

I still can't believe people continue to play online scam poker and then accuse people of cheating when its the poker site itself that is scamming you out of your money. You think its just coincidence that you have a monster hand and your opponent manages to draw the 1 outter he needed to win after both of you shoved all in to cap out that rake? The data is out there for everyone to see but nobody bothers to look at it and say something. The playing more hands is just a scapegoat players use to lie to themselves that the game is legitimate. I've been playing poker for money since 1998, both online and at the casino, and roughly about the same amount of hands at each (never liked multi-tabling online). When it came to online play, I saw 100x more monster hands vs draws than I ever did on the felt. For example, I have only seen 2 royals at my table at the casino in 25+ years, meanwhile I have literally hit over 50 royals by myself online in half that amount of time, while sticking to just 1 table. So the whole "you play more hands online" comment people love to use to defend online poker is complete dog shit.

Money taker thought the 2 was a 6. There really isn't a story here

On the PotRipper graph, I always thought it was interesting the player at 23VPIP losing at 350bb/hr? That has to be embezzlement, right?

Hope you do a follow up doug theres new info coming out that all the way up to 500nl atleast of players having massive unobtainable winrates with crazy stats. This is just the tip of the iceberg. ex #1 player on 50nl leaderboard has a 220bb/100 winrate

I got cheated by him and GG gave me the 100bbs back. Anyway, we get robbed by GG themselves because of the abusive rake so no surprise at all 🤣

The lads a genius. GG shouldnt ban him, they should offer him a job.

The win rate tracking software should be able to recognize graphs like you showed & periodically red flag players for site administrators to review by default.

The client should NEVER have private access to anything but personal hole cards!! I guess that's how they managed to develop so many interactive features in little time. They just didn't give a f**k about security and allowed client access to restricted information. This is a disgraceful way to save time and money on software development. They shouldn't rely on clients not getting hacked. Since they chose this shady business practice then there must be many other possible ways to get restricted information. So shady 🤦‍♂️

I have my doubts it was the first. This is probably just the person who got greedy and stood out. In all honesty though this should be a warning to people that poker sites likely aren't as secure as they would have us believe. You have to wonder what else is flying under the radar, especially with sophisticated AI becoming more prominent. Its going to take these sites a lot of money to keep up with it.

Haven’t played online poker in years because of hackers and bots. Everyone claimed it was safe, but this proves it still is not.

A beautiful Robbi J4 cutaway montage. Excellent work! Well done!

Moneytaker is from Russia. He's not hacking. It's a "special cyber operation."

Good video as always Vanessa!

A big thumbs up for using the phrase "raises the question" instead of "begs the question" as is so often done these days

Wow. It's a basic rule that the network traffic must never contain any additional data to that which is to be immediately displayed. Easier said than done with some software architectures, but still. I've requested a withdrawal of my money now just in case there's a run that they can't handle. Just like when Absolute / Ultimate went under.

Over 25 years playing online poker. Play tested 36 different companies software. Some still owe me money. Yeah, it's a wild wild world. I try to play at the sites banning Trackers and Bots. So not the most popular sites. 5-6 companies own all the poker sites. Choose wisely and I'll see you on the baize.

The amount of times you feel cheated on online poker is ridiculous people calling all in with nothing an hitting with 1 card to go all the time

This site is 100% scam cheaters or not this site is rigged

What about the players that went bankrupt because of cheating

The reason people are able to get away with it is because all of these people who defend these sites to the bitter end. These hackers don't just do this by themselves there is always a team so imagine how many of these hacker teams play on regulated and unregulated sites.

I deposited, played one tourney at GG, asked one question from customer service, don't get a reply. Withdrew all my money. Sketchy company, no customer service.

I live in CR, I used to work for most of on line poker sites... Only one of them was ok with having in-house super-users...another was caught like Doug said, 15 years ago. I wonder if GG is doing the same on a big scale, like people working from Home in UK or RUSSIA, Croatia, Montenegro..etc...this could be anywhere with a VPN, but broooo what the actual fuck, this could be bots programmed to be super-users.

Love the subtle shade on the jack high lol

I had multiple times when I thought some cheating was going on, the last one was a guy calling a perfect executed bluff on a K high board with flush and straight possibilities and he stone called me for more than 2.5k with 9 4 off after calling every street instantly

If this was client side they were sending everyones hole cards to each client. Very odd choice

This is rampant and the reason I stopped playing years ago. These ‘cheaters’ are actually the poker sites themselves. The crazy hands you’ve shown here I have seen hundreds of times - from micro stakes to higher stakes. And the ‘cheaters’ are always Brits or Russians.

When the blazer comes out you know it's serious

Funny just got an alert email from ACR regarding phishing attempts…. 🤔

anyone playing online poker with todays AI, RTA, solvers and backdoors is quite frankly not very smart.

Why does it seem like you know Robbi cheated, yet you had her on the lodge livestream after the fact. Honest question. It's baffled me ever since she appeared on the stream.

Doug, I was disappointed and surprised to see no video breaking down Garrets return to the table. Would be cool to see his hand Vs Patrick broken down.

A client program that has information about opponent cards? Really? It's not just a vulnerability. It's complete incompetence in software development and security.