Superuser Caught on GGPoker - "MoneyTaker69" Thread
Original thread on 2+2 forum: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/superuser-caught-ggpoker-quot-moneytaker69-quot-thread-1829967/
User "MoneyTaker69" is alleged to be superusing on GG Poker.
In December, Moneytaker won at 90bb/100 on GG Poker in 8,900 hands playing 53% VPIP. Soon after, he binked a $150 Sunday MTT for $47,586 while playing an extremely volatile strategy, which aroused a lot of suspicion. GG Poker has acknowledged the situation privately and is preparing to address it, but it's important for the public to know immediately due to the significance of superusing.
The Results
The following results graph comes from Smarthand, a site that tracks online poker results. MoneyTaker won at 90bb/100 in December playing 53/17.
 | This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 998x608. |
Typically, a player with this VPIP/PFR ratio would be in the -50bb/100 range. Even if we were impossibly generous and said he was breakeven, this run would be a statical anomaly. For a -50bb recreational? Impossible.
Here is a primedope simulation of the probability of a breakeven player having this run.
The following is a simulation of possible runs for a player with a given winrate using primedope's variance calculator. The light blue line at the top of the graph represents the "Best" run, which is the luckiest run a person could have in 1,000 trials.
This is a -50bb player playing 9000 hands. Their luckiest run is around -10 buyins. Mokeytaker won 77 buy-ins.
Additionally, MoneyTaker won a $150 GG Masters Sunday MTT, which is a big open field tournament. This makes the possibility of chip dumping or targeting specific players with a virus much less likely.
The Hands
The following hands were collected by various users as examples of likely foul play.
How is he cheating?
Based off his play, the most natural explanation is that he can see the cards. He rarely puts in money significantly behind or calls the river with the worst hand. Also, his winrate is so high that RTA could not possibly explain it.
It's unclear how he's able to see others' cards, and it's possible he's not the only one exploiting a glitch in the system. A post on 2+2 highlighted a group of suspicious accounts that played for brief stints and won for >30bb/100, which is particularly difficult on GG due to their rake structure.
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=5239
There is no clear evidence that the players highlighted in the above post are superusing, but it's not unreasonable to suspect that this could be a larger issue at scale if done by hackers that want to be less obvious than running >50% VPIP.
Hacker Group
"MoneyTaker" is a hacker group. It's unclear if this account is in any way associated with them or if it's just incidental, but worth mentioning.
What's Next?
As a community, we await GG Poker's response. I'm confident they'll do the right thing and share everything they know about this incident shortly.