New Program Developed to Combat Recent Superuser Threat to Poker

The recent emergence of supposed superusers put a lot of poker players back in traumatic memories from the past. The Ultimate Bet scandal, Black Friday, even Mike Postle. But while many were worried about the possibility of honest players losing money, a tech firm with roots in poker was getting busy developing a program to combat the cheats. They’ve since made it publicly available for free.

How Did the Latest Superuser Scandal Emerge?

Earlier this month, a remote-access agent logged into Jurojin Poker and accessed dozens of high stakes players’ hands, seeing their hole cards. Compromising poker software to revealed private hands to the superuser, the breach of security was identified as a complex one by Jurojin Poker themselves who said they were working to stop some highly sophisticated hackers.

The superuser method if cheating is not a new one. Back in 2008, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission punished disgraced former world champion Russ Hamilton after he was found to be involved in the Ultimate Bet scandal where players on the site were scammed out of an incredible $6.1 million through software similar to that used in this latest sting.

While many players expressed concerns, others said that this sort of security breach happens more often than others know, with Patrick ‘Pads’ Leonard detailing his own knowledge of the subject. In the meantime, Jurojin published a statement telling of the “highly targeted operation” that had affected them for 12  months from June last year to this summer.

What Are QuintAce Doing to Solve the Problem?

For the past seven years, AceGuardian have been the research operation brainchild of many people, including American poker pro John Andress. Andress has won over $3 million at the felt, and his experience has helped shape the recent program that has fallen under the QuintAce banner. research operation AceGuardian has released an open-source detection system designed to help online poker operators identify superusers, following a recent cheating scandal that exposed the hole cards of high-stakes players. The programme, which analyses completed hands to then identify suspicious decisions have been made available to the public, meaning anyone could in theory catch a superuser. The code, widely released this week, can’t directly identify cheats but instead highlights suspicious patterns of betting that suggest a superuser instead of a regular player.

According to QuintAce, suspicious betting can be picked up by the technology, highlighting strong hands that are folded, or unexpectedly successful low-equity moves and raises. The program can even highlight how often a player makes a suspiciously accurate decision against specific cards during gameplay.

Innovative Program Developed with Poker in Mind

QuintAce’s development of a program to fight superusers hacking accounts has, in part, been down to John Andress, a successful poker pro with over $3 million in live tournament earnings . Andress is AceGuardian’s head of game integrity, and his passions for brand transparency has been key to the development of tech that is now open-source and available to all operators.

The use of QuintAce’s program should help GGPoker, PokerStars, 888poker and others major poker operators solve a situation that okayers and fans are worried about. Nobody wants a Russ Hamilton situation developing again, and moves like ‘oracle folds’, where a player folds in a position where they were much more likely to call will be found out.

Whether the major poker brands like GGPoker and PokerStars adopt this new technology remains to be seen, but QuintAce has made its technology available to the public, putting the onus on operators to join the fight.