QQPK has blacklisted 893 accounts and put aside $300,000 for players affected by the so-called collusion cheating syndicate, but it is only now clarifying who will receive a piece of the pie. However, the QQPK bots case is not over yet. Independent researcher Vojtech Cervinka has identified thousands of other nicknames that he thinks are bot-operated, and players are beginning to question whether the refund policy has left out too many victims.
How Many QQPK Bots Were Identified?
The first sign of trouble in the QQPK bots case emerged on October 9, when a group of players published their research results on the Two Plus Two poker forum.
Analyzing approximately 26 million hands dealt in 27,936 tournaments from July 2 until October 2, the players identified 2,587 bot-like accounts.
In response to the accusation, QQPK blocked withdrawals from these accounts and banned 724 of them for automated play on October 13.
As of October 15, the number grew to 893 accounts and QQPK started to speak of a cheating gang, which used hole card exchange while playing at the same tables.
According to QQPK, 567 accounts were banned based on the outside report, whereas the other 326 were detected by QQPK’s security team.
The rest of 2,020 accounts were not part of the syndicate and remain blocked pending investigation of the situation.
According to the community, as MTT Database posts on X (Twitter), the situation is much worse than reported by QQPK. After analyzing 24 million player-hands, he found out that approximately 17.5 million, or more than 70%, of them, were played by bots. He proved his statement by publishing a list of 11,469 nicknames of suspected bots.
| Source | Number | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Two Plus Two investigation | 2,587 | Accounts flagged as suspected bots |
| QQPK | 893 | Accounts confirmed and banned |
| Vojtech Cervinka | 11,469 | Nicknames he classifies as likely bots |
For now, QQPK has not confirmed Cervinka’s numbers and nobody knows how many of his accounts are among those already banned.
Who Qualifies for QQPK’s $300,000 Compensation?
The remaining $235,373 out of the total $300,000 is not going to come from the cheaters because the amount retrieved from the banned accounts totals only $64,627.
Thus, the QQPK network is providing the rest of the money at its expense.
As for the act, the operator promises to allocate the funds based on an actuarial model, which will estimate the damages incurred in every particular tournament separately.
The report released on October 20 states that 13,928 players will get QQPK compensation, and the following conditions apply:
- First, they participated in QQPK tournaments during the last three months.
- Secondly, they played against the at least two banned accounts in the same pot on the same table.
- Thirdly, they were losing their money while playing these tournaments, i.e., they earned less than they invested in buy-in.
- It is reported that there is nothing the players who are going to get the payment need to do; it all should happen automatically.
And these conditions infuriate the players. Apparently, everyone who played against the flagged accounts once will not get any payment, as well as those players who played against bots and lost pots, but remained in profits.
Have QQPK Players Received Their Refunds?
According to QQPK, the company promised to release a list of the tournaments and payouts, along with information about player stats and compensation, by October 17.
However, it is now October 22, and PokerDealsHQ still cannot locate the list anywhere on QQPK’s official websites. While the eligibility criteria were published on October 20, there is still no confirmation that all eligible players have received their QQPK refunds.
Why Are Players Questioning the Investigation?
It is no surprise that a significant portion of the dispute centers around the all-ins. Initially, there were approximately 138,705 big blinds above the expectation in the all-ins from 193,757 total all-ins according to the Two Plus Two report. Such an incredible amount of excess in the numbers immediately raised suspicions about QQPK cheating and possible manipulation of the shuffle itself.
QQPK directly addresses this issue in its October 15 report. After having put the researchers’ own sample through its system, it found a deviation of the same kind, approximately 14.6 standard deviations above the expectation, and agrees that the calculations are indeed correct under the model that it uses.
However, QQPK takes issue with the sample. The company claims that after filtering the duplicate records in the sample, there are only 1.76 million unique hands, and the data covers just 9,436 out of the 24,026 tournaments held between July and October.
Yet, even after such extensive filtration, the deviation is still bigger than expected, according to QQPK. This was due to the actions of the card-sharing ring. By exchanging the information about their hole cards, the banned accounts could avoid the worst situations at the very beginning of the game and bet their chips only when they were ahead. The 2,020 accounts remaining on the list were, however, playing normally in around 1.22 million hands, according to QQPK, which released the anonymized all-in hand history for everyone to verify the numbers.
Furthermore, the company apologized for the oversight, and claims that the RNG it uses is verified by Gaming Laboratories International. Moreover, the internal audit did not uncover any evidence of manipulation or of backdoor access to the RNG. It is a rather strong statement from the company, however, there is still no confirmation from any third party, and the researchers did not claim that the operator was involved.
What Comes Next
There is also much that is resolved. It has suspended 893 accounts in the QQPK poker bots investigation, set aside $300,000, and defined eligibility for reimbursement.
However, there are still many unresolved issues. Players are awaiting answers on whether all eligible players have been reimbursed, what will become of the 2,020 suspended accounts and why external estimates are so much higher than those of QQPK.
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