The inner workings of a massive 'botting' operation created and centered in Russia and first explored in a recent Bloomberg Business Week feature have been further detailed in a complimentary piece for Poker Pro by industry veteran Jonathan Raab. Rather than focusing on the players and the organization behind the Bot Farm Corporation [BFC], which was the aim of Kit Chellel's Bloomberg expose, Raab's corresponding update instead examines the networking aspect of the BFC's infestation of the online-poker industry.
Raab's update offers additional evidence of the botfarm's operations through an examination of business-networking records and online links to create a trail showing the ongoing presence of BFC and related business entities in online poker. The existence of the Russia-centered botting enterprise has been widely discussed for several years, albeit in oblique terms, but wasn't fully outlined until now.
The details have led to well-grounded allegations against JackPoker as being a site infused with bots, though in a statement provided to PokerOrg (see bottom of article), JackPoker took issues with some other points in the two exposés published to date and the post on the Russian-language GipsyPoker forum.
Raab and Chellel were aware of each other's works in progress and had corresponded with each other before Chellel's feature went public and instantly drew the poker world's attention. And though Raab described Chellel's work as "groundbreaking research," he also noted that the Bloomberg article stopped short of revealing some sought-after answers, such as which sites were known to be corrupted by bots.
"The baton has been passed on," wrote Raab, "and it is now my turn to reveal the research I have also been working on for several months."
Raab details allegedly bot-driven JackPoker site
Raab, who founded the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour in 2007, accepted a job in January 2024 as the editor of PokerWired.com, an affiliate site that earned revenue by generating signups to new poker sites. One of his tasks was to write a room review about a relatively new offering, JackPoker. He had been playing on the site for a few weeks before he noticed that something was awry.
JackPoker offered huge sign-up bonuses, but according to Raab, never seemed to show the traffic to match the 1,500-2,000 players the site claimed were at the tables "at any given time". That led to significant and ongoing overlays that never seemed to be corrected by adjusting guarantees or other elements.
However, Raab didn't become convinced he'd been about to promote a bot-driven site until he entered the main event of JackPoker's Nuclear 4s Series. The tourney had a $40 buy-in and a $44,000 guarantee. Since the event needed 1,212 entrants to cover its guarantee, he figured it was a mortal lock to offer a large overlay.
Raab registered for the Nuclear 4s main several days in advance, then watched for days as no one else entered. He remained the only entrant until less than 10 minutes before the tourney started, when, as if by magic, enough players trickled in to just meet the minimum needed and get the tourney underway.
The action only turned more strange from that point. As Raab described it, "When the game started, the players on my table seemed really aggressive right from the start. There were lots of three-bets and four-bets, sometimes followed by an all-in, usually everyone folding to it. Then some players started calling, and there were 2-way all-ins or 3-way all-ins every few hands. And much of the time, both/all players had heaps of junk or very marginal hands.
"After about 10 minutes of play, I looked at the lobby. It was up to over 120 entries, with about 20 exits already. Within 25 minutes, I had busted. I had a premium pair versus some garbage that had open shoved ahead of me, which got there."
'Active Players' counter doesn't match entry surge
Raab decided not to re-enter, but he kept on watching the tournament lobby as the number of entrants ticked very steadily upward. "My jaw was wide open; I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. For the next hour, the entries kept coming at the same rate, 10-11 per minute, with no deviation in the rate of entry." Meanwhile, he also monitored the overall number of players being shown as playing on the site, which should have made a huge jump if all these players had logged in to play the main. Instead, the site counter held steady or even dropped a bit.
As he then suspected would happen, the Nuclear 4s main event just happened to meet its guarantee, less than 20 minutes before late registration closed. The event ended up with more than 1,400 entries, the vast majority of which appeared to be bogus.
The episode led Raab to do more research into JackPoker, which in turn led him to Russian botfarm-related threads on 2+2 and, most importantly, on the Russian poker forum GipsyTeam. There, near the end of a major thread, he encountered a lengthy post from what appeared to be a Bot Farm Corporation insider that included numerous details that proved to be true.
Among those details was the seeming confirmation that JackPoker was owned and operated by the BFC itself as a standalone site running on software developed by Russia's EvenBet. Another detail proven out was that a list of sites that the poster, 'LadenBaden', alleged had working relationships with BFC's entities matched almost exactly to a compilation of sites included among subdomains that were associated with another BFC-linked entity, Deeplay, by Raab over a year later.
Though Raab didn't dig deeper into the EvenBet relationship of the episode, the fraudulent player counter itself is a matter of concern. Software for a standalone poker site obtained from a provider such as EvenBet might include a player counter as a plug-and-play option, but such a software component would not itself be expected to be fraudulent or able to be manipulated. The Nuclear 4s episode Raab witnessed, if accurate, thus calls into question EvenBet's knowledge of the purpose of BFC's JackPoker site and the massive ruse involving bots that seemingly took place at least once, but perhaps much more often.
Naming sites where bots operate
As to where the Russian Bot Farm Corporation-created bots are being deployed, it's an open question. Bots appear to be everywhere and in large numbers, but tying any specific bot back to BFC would be a daunting challenge, even if aided by statistical analysis, which is how bots are normally detected. There's a far darker part of that question, however. Are there online online-poker sites where the sites themselves are complicit in or have been coerced into the alleged BFC bots being allowed to run?
Raab raised that question in his PokerPro expose, offering up some data but not quite being able to irrefutably say yes. Still, the data that exists solidly points to such partnerships, and those connections are another focal point of Raab's feature. It's one of three significant explorations to date of the Bot Farm Corporation's enterprise, along with Chellel's Bloomberg piece and that stunning post by 'BadenLaden' on the Russian GipsyForum over a year ago.
BadenLaden's post also described some of the corporate and technical structure behind the Bot Farm Corporation, and that his post has been allowed to stand for over a year and mirrors information disclosed in Chellel's and Raab's pieces speaks to its overall accuracy. JackPoker, according to BadenLaden, is the online-site half of a larger entity called EcoSystem, while the other half of EcoSystem is an even more intriguing entity called Eco SaaS (Software as a Service).
The Eco SaaS entity is allegedly marketed to poker site operators as a way to allow new players' deposits to last longer and encourage re-deposits. It also allegedly deploys tougher bots to take on non-bot-using online pros and ultimately drive them from the sites. Eco SaaS, of course, derives significant revenue from aiding the sites' goals of keeping new deposits flowing, though the poster did not detail exactly how that relationship worked.
BadenLaden named several online sites that had partnered with Eco SaaS in allegedly allowing the deployment of said bots, though whether that partnership was reached under duress imposed by the botmakers is an open question. BadenLaden also provided the top-line summary of how Eco SaaS was seemingly designed to enrich both newcomers' experiences and the site's bottom line – with bots sitting down "at certain intervals, rotations, and game styles" in order to guarantee a game at any time of the day or night.
According to BadenLaden's claims, the bots can even provide human-like chat during play as a way to convince other players that they are real people and not bots. But it's just one part of the massive ruse being played upon online players.
JackPoker: We are not owned by Deeplay
Just as online sites noticed the pressure being placed on new players by increasingly skilled 'pro' accounts, the bot makers noticed it as well. EcoSystem dates to 2016, claimed BadenLaden, and in early 2022 the functional split between JackPoker and Eco SaaS was put into place. EcoSaas's first online-site 'customer', according to BadenLaden, appears to have been the Chinese site HHpoker, but by mid-2023, there were others. "Eco SaaS has set itself the task of scaling with a narrow set of services to a wider audience," BadenLaden posted. "To go beyond the Chinese market (HHPoker) to the global one and start cooperating with new platforms (PPPoker, EvenBet, WePoker, ClubGG)."
In his Pro Poker piece, Raab served up some research that appears to verify the relationship between EcoSystem and several other sites. Much of the technical and internet structure behind BFC's operations can be seen online, organized through a entity called Deeplay, in which hundreds of domains utilized within the botting and EcoSystem's operations are gathered.
In its statement below, JackPoker denied that Deeplay was the owner of JackPoker, but was instead a third-party service which provided JackPoker a "best in class analytics package". PokerOrg does not assert that Deeplay owns or is part of the other BFC-associated entities, but does note that the relationship between Deeplay and alleged JackPoker parent EcoSystem appears to be current and ongoing.
Many of those domains are also trackable, and Raab discovered that HHPoker, PPPoker, WePoker, and ClubGG were present multiple times in the names of subdomains controlled by Deeplay. Three other online sites or networks are also present as multiple Deeplay subdomains -- Pokersaint, Infinity Poker, and Poker Bros. (A recent subdomain finder scan, current as of Tuesday, September 24, verifies that all these sites are still present.) The presence of the sites in Deeplay's subdomain registry is not absolute proof, absent of other evidence, but it is indicative of some sort of ongoing relationship between the botting operations and the named sites. None of the sites have issued any public comment on the matter in the wake of being named in Raab's piece.
Neolabs and Neopokerbot were two other businesses that Raab encountered during his research that were part of the sprawling BFC operation. These entities were allegedly used to market and sell copies of the BotFarm software to online players who weren't already part of BFC's organizational reach. The entities' exact relationship to the BFC operations and to JackPoker is not fully known to the public.
Affiliates pushing JackPoker hard
Raab's investigation into JackPoker's seemingly bot-driven framework also resulted in his quickly leaving his role as editor of PokerWired once he learned of his boss's ongoing relationship with JackPoker. The affiliate owner, who Raab didn't name, grudgingly agreed to remove Raab's pieces on JackPoker from the PokerWired site but continued to promote the site on other sites he owned. That included the JackPoker domain itself, which Raab stated the affiliate owner obtained and which may now be in use as an affiliate-driven gateway to the actual domains where gameplay occurs.
"His response was effectively to ask me to stop questioning things, saying that he can’t keep justifying his decisions to work with specific operators," Raab said he was told in rough terms when he kept pushing back on the relationship between his affiliate boss and JackPoker. Raab left soon after he discovered that his boss had launched a JackPoker-only affiliate site.
WiredPoker.com has since been shelved as an affiliate site, though it remains owned, according to online registrar services, by New World Gaming Ltd. NWG is a UK-registered affiliate company that has been in business since 2008. Many of WiredPoker's web pages are readily viewable through the Internet Wayback Machine, though, as is typical of a certain portion of affiliate outlets, their pages and offers lack identification of the business behind the affiliate's published signup offers.
JackPoker issues statement to PokerOrg
"JackPoker would like to take this opportunity to clarify its position with regards to strategy and operational methods.
JackPoker aims to become the number one recreational online poker site in the world. We will achieve this by delivering the very best gameplay experience for recreational Players in online poker. This experience is built on three player promises:
- The most technologically advanced infrastructure: sophisticated table matching algorithms, anti-cheat detection, customised & personalised reward system.
- Strictly controlled ecosystem: Toxic players quickly identified, restricted, and ultimately banned. We welcome players of all skill levels, but the inequality of player skill levels, which massively favours regulars and pro skill levels, is killing poker for recreational players. Our ambition is to offer recreational players skill levels on tables that are matched to give everyone a fair game.
- Best rewards in poker: Preferred play styles and attributes can unlock industry-leading rewards and bonuses.
We have embraced AI as a method of delivering this positive experience for our players, and the JackPoker room has highly developed software requiring deep analytics and modern AI technology to be able to examine and identify both positive and negative patterns. Our use of AI enables us to provide a fairer ecosystem for recreational players as well as provide unmatched bonuses to those identified as preferred players.
To facilitate the above (and as most growing companies have done), we have outsourced analysis software and tools to external experts in the field. Amongst a host of external partners we work with, Deeplay provided a best-in-class analytics package which was utilised as part of our software development program.
We acknowledge that the entire online poker industry is facing a challenge with its approach to managing 'bots'. We have taken steps to ensure as much as possible that our players receive the maximum amount of protection that we can offer. We have a zero tolerance to bots; our fully staffed Anti-Toxic unit works 24/7 to detect and close any fraudulent behaviour as soon as it is detected or reported in order to create a secure and fair gaming environment. All players and partners are bound by specific terms and conditions regarding toxic behavior; these terms are available on Jack-Poker.com.
We also want to make absolutely clear that JackPoker is and never has been owned by Deeplay. Jack Entertainment is a wholly owned private entity with no corporate shareholding. JackPoker is now taking legal advice with regards to some negative publications and will move forward accordingly."
JackPoker declares, "We have a zero tolerance to Bots," but the evidence suggests that that applies only to external bots that non-BFC players or entities might employ on the JackPoker site. When pressed a second time on Raab's experience in the JackPoker Nuclear 4s main event, JackPoker offered this:
"We take the allegations made recently about our Nuclear 4s tournament extremely seriously. The series ran 12 Feb to 03 March, and during this time we had no negative player feedback and no concerns of any kind were made to our Anti-Toxic or customer support teams. We are reviewing gameplay and entry times for this series and will act accordingly if any unusual play patterns are verified.
Skilled players not welcome
Whether or not Raab filed a complaint directly with JackPoker appears to be irrelevant amid all the other claims and evidence he later published. As to whether JackPoker's zero-tolerance claims regarding bots are true or are an exercise in semantics is also worth a deeper look. Employing bots is not the only way a site could "provide a fairer ecosystem for recreational players". For example, a site could simply ban players who achieve profitable win rates... a claim many online players have made.
In its response, however, JackPoker heavily touts its AI framework as part of its pro-recreational process. In practice, that means fewer options, with a raft of house bots being the likeliest possibility. Other such options include things such as rigging the deck in favor of weaker players (also frequently claimed) and even doing things such as changing the nature of the game itself into something not quite like the traditional online-tournament experience, as one company has been reportedly developing for some time.
Whatever the truth is regarding JackPoker, one thing seems clear: highly skilled players are unwelcome. Whether the site itself is a mirage of sorts that's more of a toolbox for effective bot deployment remains to be fully understood or proven.
