The story of suspected bots making deep runs in ACR Poker’s $12.5m GTD Venom tournament has seized the headlines in the poker world this week, in particular given that one of the suspect accounts, ‘Withia’, had made it to 2nd place overall after Day 2.
The suspect accounts were first flagged by the X account MTT Database Review, leading to WPN’s security department releasing a statement confirming that ‘Withia’ would be unable to play the tournament and would be blinded away.
Some hours following that statement, MTT Database Review posted an update revealing that three more suspected bot accounts playing the Venom have been locked in the same way: ‘Verucasalt5’, ‘MReGoR’ and ‘acquiton’. What’s more, it states a further 50 MTT bots which were previously reported have also been banned.
"MTT streets look pretty clean today," the tweet states, going on to say "We are not done yet. Need to see more transparent refunds now and make sure there are better security processes put in place to eliminate bots for good. But it is a huge progress."
Who is ‘MTT Database Review’?
MTT Database Review is the account of Vojtech Cervinka, a pro player and coach who uses data to help poker players identify and plug leaks in their game. Speaking on the subject in yesterday’s Only Friends podcast, Matt Berkey confirmed that ‘MTT Database Review’ is a regular poster in a high-stakes poker community on Discord.
“There’s a high-stakes Discord that I’m a part of,” said Berkey, a high-stakes pro and a member of the PokerOrg Player Advisory Board, “MTT Database Review is one of the major posters and we have a direct line of communication to all the site reps… he was in direct communication, over a month ago, with the site reps of WPN, basically saying ‘here’s a list of all these bots, you should look into them’. He even went so far as to forewarn them, like, ‘with the biggest Venom coming up you are certainly going to take on a bot attack, be sure to do your due diligence ahead of time’.”
Catch the full episode here.
It appears that the security department has taken the threat seriously. While many players on social media have questioned why it has taken so long to take action, others have praised ACR Poker for doing so in such a visible way.
Chris Moneymaker - a fellow member of our Player Advisory Board - is at the time of writing sitting in 6th place at the Venom final table. With tongue firmly in cheek, we assume, he expressed the hope that some of his opponents might not be around when final table play resumes.
The final table of the $12.5m GTD Venom is scheduled to start this afternoon at 4:35pm ET. All nine players have locked up at least $148k, with the winner set to receive over $1.8m.
