[Bodog/Bovada/Ignition] Unofficial Thread

They have removed my rakeback on two sites including Bovada after a period of time, but I can't say if they are to blame or if the site is.

So... back to bots.

It seems like their profiles have changed a lot since the start of the year (for example very few obvious, river squeeze spots happening like before). There are some that still stand out but I believe there are multiple profiles running. Anyone else noticed the same/any insights?

i had a pretty obvious one last night but i'm not sure if the frequency was higher on reg tables before vs zone (since static positions vs it shuffling every hand)

the profiles are pretty varied, there's a ton of different open sizes and limping- still haven't figured out if certain bots play exclusively one style or if they cycle through a combination of the different profiles

Yeah you are right. Their sophistication keeps improving, they removed a couple of leaks and it seems like you say there are more manual ones. I absolutely destroyed them HU until they got fixed, they had some strange leaks like not adjusting to 100% 3bets and they would always 3b to pot regardless of your sizing coupled with some postflop leaks like overbluffed lines/sizings.

One thing that is interesting that I still not understand is how they never snap decisions when faced all in. They never snap call with the nuts pre or post. There is always like a 5-8 seconds tank. It's same with a lot of their bluffcatching on rivers. It feels like their software somehow calculates things in game with card removal that occasionally take a lot of time. If there are human profiles I think it's likely they are very unexperienced players.

Any affiliates in here? If so please DM with instructions as to how I can get setup with rakeback.

The account(s) I brought up a few months back at 200z and 500z are still playing, and the "never snap" thing applies to them as well. At least I assume they're still at 500z, I haven't played it too much recently as I've been spooked away by all the collusion claims (in comparison, I haven't seen hardly any at 200z) and the declining traffic in the game.

200z possible/probable bot still takes weird pf sizings, such as 2x open from SB, and 3x from EP (this one, of course, is less weird). They're always, ALWAYS, sitting with 400-1.3k BB stacks. As far as I can tell, someone just sits a bot down at the games 24/7 and leaves the computer.

I don't care what anybody says something strange about the RNG on the site. I have a 10bb/100 win rate here. I have played over 400,000 hands at global poker. I would be willing to bet something fishy about ignition poker even though I have a decent win rate I just cannot believe the run out you see on this site. I'm taking my money off

Not Bovada, but I have Zapruder for ACR. I wouldn't recommend. They're not very responsive and it's like pulling teeth to get them to pay me every month and the $ amount we're talking about is miniscule.

You have to message them repeatedly every day for a few days before they even respond to you.

I'm on the "automated" payment system yet I still have to message them to pay me and then it takes like 3weeks plus constant reminders for them to pay me my $50 lol.

Plus most recently there's something messed up w/ the formula or whatever so they're calculating negative RB for me. Meaning the more hands I play my RB balance gets increasingly negative everyday. Right now I'm at -$150. They said they're trying to figure out what's going on, but I'm not holding my breath.

This is strictly hypothetical at this point, plenty of regular posters in this thread can testify that I have been both trying to contribute in pm with people how to beat the bots and being active in this thread trying to raise awareness. What are peoples moral stance on just beating the bots at their own game? I would love to hear opinions on it because I dont consider it crystal clear. It doesnt matter if you are professional / recreational or not a player at all, I still would like to hear your opinion. The bots would get destroyed by humans co-operating

Pros for the humans colluding against bots:

- The botfarm would be forced to move out of business eventually, so technically the humans would just take back money essentially stolen money.
- The ecosystem could be protected, as it is now any human will bleed out and eventually get outnumbered by the bots where ignition will only be fish/recreationals vs bots. We might be quite close to this point.
- Assuming it works out it would improve everyones ev including recreationals / new players. They could possibly win or move up in stakes where as of now it's just impossible.
- Fish are getting destroyed at a quicker rate as it is now so their ev wouldn't only be raised long term but also short term

Cons for the humans colluding against bots:

- It seems somehow hard to organize, if innocent regs get caught up between it seems like a disaster. There are evidently regs still out there that manage to beat the games so unless they decide to join it feels like the whole idea becomes a wash.
- It's straight up wrong and most of us didnt get into poker for the money
- A lot of people will likely get corrupted and not be able to get back to playing fair once the bots dissappear.
- Despite not knowing law, it's clearly morally wrong, but it might be illegal/fraud to cheat?

Would like other opinions, they way I see it poker on ignition is going to die anyways long term. Before anyone judges me they can read my history of posting and see that i was one of the first to raise awareness for this and I've also posted graphs of me running 80 buyins below ev which mainly is due to the bots colluding. I'm personally still playing and winning despite it being somehow small compared to previous years. If i truly wanted to collude myself I could just set up multiple accounts or gather friends to do it.

You could argue with me what the future will be but to me the unavoidable future or current time line is:

Bots show up and started colluding somewhere between 2019-2023 > Regulars start losing winrates, some start losing and have to either leave the site or stop playing poker completely > The bots started to take over more and more, I'm sure that the PLO games have been infected longer than the NL games and nl500 and nl1000 have been affected longer tha nl2000 > As botfarm continues to grow and humans dissappears the end of this timeline will just be bots playing against fish where the botfarm will destroy the fish way quicker than 5 none-cooperating regs ever could. It doesn't seem like the fish care or are aware yet, which if they are not by now I dont think they will ever be. The message is clearly out there and if you decide to play on ignition you should be aware that every single table has a minimum of two bots regardless of stake and format. What comes next? Etirnity? Will the site die completely?

everything is fair game vs bots imo, take their money at all costs

but tbh in an anonymous environment it’s not always that easy to identify them, so I think avoiding ignition is probably better

Okay

I think part of the problem is because the software is so slow it seems worse than other software that moves faster. So for example you're only going to play 50 to 60 hands per hour at the regular tables on ignition. Where every other site you're going to play 90 to 100 hands an hour. So to me it seems like after you take a few bad beats it's almost like live poker where you say to yourself it might take me 2 hours to get this guy back in a hand. So you see two or three bad runouts and then you play for an hour and go yeah I never really got a chance to do anything because the software just moves so slow. I think that's part of why it seems like there's more set up hands on ignition poker. So I'm going to play ACR for a while and then I'm going to compare the differences between the two. And who knows my win rate might be the same or it might be better on ignition. It just doesn't feel that way to me because of how slow the site moves

i don't think colluding vs colluders will fix anything, it will result in more banning and funds lost in no time because it will be super transparent, if in fact there are bots in the site the only thing you can do is find ways to exploit them but not share this info public otherwise they will adapt.

some interesting thoughts @badreg. think this is an important convo to have.

agreeing with your second part, for me the collateral of legit players (recs particularly) being omega double cheated far outweighs the punishing of other colluders imo. it's also hard to unequivocally know if individuals/multiple people are bots/cheating in a lot of cases.

i just feel that the only way change happens is going to have to come from ignition. and as many have said i'm not optimistic of that happening...

I would like to thank you and the few others for being one of the first ones to sound the alarm. Half way through 2023 I went on the worst "downswing" of my life. I had read your posts about people cheating with half stacks at the higher limits but I didn't think this was happening at 500NL and 200NL regular tables. However, after 7 straight months of divergence between my net won and all-in adj, and my win rate getting slashed at the same time, I started suspecting that I was being cheated but I didn't know how exactly. After reading yours and others posts, I finally realized around November 2023 that it was likely from being colluded against and this wasn't just a normal downswing. I didn't even put the connection together that the bots are the colluders until later.

That said, I do think it is completely unethical for the humans to collude. It is also not practical. As others have said, I think the best thing is to just stop playing or play knowing that half your opponents are likely colluding bots.

FWIW there are many threads here on 2+2 and elsewhere on the internet making the same claims about Global Poker's RNG and run outs.
If you don't feel comfortable on Ignition by all means play on a different site; the choice is completely up to you.

Morally I couldn't do it and I would hate it if others did. That being said, no doubt this scandal will embolden those less ethical in the community to do just that.

by pontylad P

Uhhhh.. guys? this is what I just got opening the desktop laucher.

Happened to me this morning, I just reinstalled the launcher and it worked but you might only have to wait or restart your PC

Definitely. I am going to play same amount of hands at ACR that I played at ignition and compare. Early opinions are they both suck, but games at ACR do seem tougher

by pontylad P

Uhhhh.. guys? this is what I just got opening the desktop laucher.

This has happened to me a couple times, I think they accidentally let one of their domains expire. Don't need to reinstall just exit and reopen the program until it pulls from one of their active domains.

Have you tried clearing your browser cache?

Overall I think because ignition is so much slower it seems like the beats are worse because it takes longer generally for you to get your money back because you're playing less hands. Overall I don't see much difference. But I think the game's on ACR are tougher due to the fact that they allow huds

You can use huds on ignition

lol

the games are tougher on ACR because they allow Eastern European/former Soviet bloc state players

What's the fish:reg ratio in Belarus, Romania, Georgia, Slovakia, etc.? Now compare that to the fishiest nation on the planet, the US. Night and day.

(also, as already mentioned, HUDs ARE allowed on Ignition, though their value is far more limited)