Quote from: DarkDays on February 14, 2016, 11:18:27 PM

Here's a new one.

On the forums this weekend, the player "Mentat" claims that he was a prop for a while and in fact received house funds to play poker with. He also claims that he was refused a cashout for "around 30 coins" but that he received "nearly that amount over time to keep the games going".

So, it seems like Betcoin is paying their house players 30 coins, refusing cashouts, and not announcing that they employ (or the identity of) house players. Sorry for no screenshots, I'm on the run and if nobody grabs them by the time I'm home I'll edit with them.

I've been putting off the whole bot thing because its so hard to actually prove and most of the time when someone cries bot they are idiot fish - but that's what Mentats talking about.

They used bots (and Mentat + a couple others) to keep action at the tables up until the day they started the 100% rakeback tablestarter promo.

He was getting 100% rakeback and basically just helped "start tables" by playing the bots heads up and short handed. These were very Bots were very exploitable and never changed which resulted in some pretty insane bb/100

Someone gave me this document with info on all the different bot accounts, (Login name, Screen name, Account #, City etc...) The easiest way to tell if you were playing a bot was to check and see if it registered on Jan 22 2015.

http://pastebin.com/UsfK4LTm

Personally, I don't have a problem with them putting losing bots out to keep the games going, its a lot different then the GTO bots that are a threatening holdem as we know it. People would probably over react though (and they did anyway) So of course lying about it would be more convienient for Betcoin, so they did, without shame:

----

Edit, throwing in some proof of over rake:

Betcoin Overakes Capped Pots for ~~almost~~ over 600k hands.

^{spoiler alert, they keep it}

2/8/15 Edit: I now have hand histories of over raked pots going back to 10/31/15. Hands before this appear to be capped properly. I think we can conclude that the "mistake" happened around midnight UTC 10/30/15.

The Betcoin rake issue probably started off as an honest technical mistake on Betcoins part. Any decent site would apologize immediately, figure out exactly how much they owed the players and pay them back in full plus little bit more to be sure they were made whole.

November 14th a couple players realized pots were being raked higher than the advertised cap and notified support right away. If Betcoin didn't know they were over raking pots before , they knew now.

Here is ~~the earliest~~ ahand posted from a 100 NL 6 max table.
The advertised cap was 2 mbtc, they took 6 mbtc.

Code:

Game started at: 2015/11/14 17:53:36
Game ID: 10143163 0.50/1 Tokyo (Hold'em)
Seat 2 is the button
Seat 1: luismelo4 (107.34).
Seat 2: Cognative (338.25).
Seat 3: BitBandit (215.22).
Seat 4: nukemecca (168.95).
Seat 9: ungod (29.84).
Player BitBandit has small blind (0.50)
Player nukemecca has big blind (1)
Player BitBandit received a card.
Player BitBandit received a card.
Player nukemecca received a card.
Player nukemecca received a card.
Player ungod received card: [Qc]
Player ungod received card: [3c]
Player luismelo4 received a card.
Player luismelo4 received a card.
Player Cognative received a card.
Player Cognative received a card.
Player ungod folds
Player luismelo4 folds
Player Cognative raises (3)
Player BitBandit calls (2.50)
Player nukemecca raises (6)
Player Cognative calls (4)
Player BitBandit calls (4)
*** FLOP ***: [9s 3d As]
Player BitBandit checks
Player nukemecca bets (10.23)
Player Cognative calls (10.23)
Player BitBandit calls (10.23)
*** TURN ***: [9s 3d As] [4s]
Player BitBandit checks
Player nukemecca bets (33.59)
Player Cognative calls (33.59)
Player BitBandit folds
*** RIVER ***: [9s 3d As 4s] [4d]
Player nukemecca bets (57.94)
Player Cognative allin (287.43)
Player nukemecca allin (60.19)
Uncalled bet (169.30) returned to Cognative
------ Summary ------
Pot: 349.12. Rake 6. JP fee 0.01
Board: [9s 3d As 4s 4d]
Player luismelo4 does not show cards.Bets: 0. Collects: 0. Wins: 0.
*Player Cognative shows: Full House (3/4) [3s 3h]. Bets: 168.95. Collects: 349.12. Wins: 180.17.
Player BitBandit does not show cards.Bets: 17.23. Collects: 0. Loses: 17.23.
Player nukemecca shows: Two pairs. As and 4s [Ac Ks]. Bets: 168.95. Collects: 0. Loses: 168.95.
Player ungod does not show cards.Bets: 0. Collects: 0. Wins: 0.
Game ended at: 2015/11/14 17:54:35

Update: Earliest hand now 10/31 - 11/1
October 31 (EST):

Code:

[color=red]Winning Poker Network Game #9777237: No Limit Holdem ($0.50/$1) [2015/11/01 02:21:55 UTC]
Table: Tokyo
Seats: 9
Seat 3: g0tjohnd ($153.79)
Seat 4: TheDealer ($158.28)
Seat 5: ungod ($119.24)
Seat 6: Beachside ($86.09)
Seat 8: ChemoJoe ($99)
Button is seat 6
ChemoJoe: posts small blind $0.50
g0tjohnd: posts big blind $1
HOLE CARDS
ungod: dealt [5d 5h]
TheDealer: calls $1
ungod: raises $2
Beachside: folds
ChemoJoe: folds
g0tjohnd: raises $6
TheDealer: calls $6
ungod: calls $5
FLOP [4s 5c 5s]
g0tjohnd: bets $13.97
TheDealer: calls $13.97
ungod: calls $13.97
TURN [4s 5c 5s] [Jd]
g0tjohnd: checks
TheDealer: checks
ungod: bets $20.60
g0tjohnd: folds
TheDealer: raises all-in $137.31
ungod: raises all-in $77.67
TheDealer: pulls back uncalled bet $39.04
RIVER [4s 5c 5s] [Jd] [6h]
SUMMARY
Pot: $253.94 | Rake: $6 | BBJ: $0.01 |
Board: [4s 5c 5s Jd 6h]
Seat 3: g0tjohnd lost -$20.97
Seat 4: TheDealer lost -$119.24 [9s As] One Pair, Fives
Seat 5: ungod won $253.94 (+$134.70) [5d 5h] Four of a Kind, Fives
Seat 6: Beachside didn't bet
Seat 8: ChemoJoe lost -$0.50[/color]

Betcoin deleted posts in the main forum bringing attention to it and asked the players to submit a ticket.

They made no effort to inform or compensate players, fix the issue, or even reply to thos who had already complained for OVER THREE WEEKS.

December 8th I made THIS POST on BitcoinTalk, where they could not delete it,calling betcoin out for all of the above.

December 9th Betcoin Jessica STARTED A THREAD offering a 50 mbtc tournament ticket to players who test the rake and report back with "good feedback" Players jumped on the chance at free money and posted how great the rake was and were thanked with free tickets.

(There were plenty of tables running at the time, why wouldn't they watch them, look over hand historys, data, etc. Any other site would simply look at data, not player feedback. The only logical reasons I can think for creating a thread like is because they thought the positive reaction to the rewards would help their image, or there were no employees available that understood how rake works.)

Two hands from Sebtember 9th:

6 handed 100NL. Rake should be 2.5% with a cap of 2 mbtc. 6 mbtc is actually raked.

Heads Up 5000NL, Rake should be 2.5% with a 1 mbtc cap. 5 mbtc is actually raked. At a table like this, Betcoin was taking 4 mbtc they weren't entitled to every time they saw a flop, for over 3 weeks. (Tablestarter rakeback not offered on this table)

December 11th Betcoin makes the following statement:

Quote from: Betcoin.AG on December 12, 2015, 05:54:31 AM

The rake is actually programmed correctly in the system with the proper cap, but appears to be capping at 2 ($0.82) for most tables 5 ($2.14) for some tables and the highest of 8 mbtc ($3.43) for very few tables. To be clear this is still within the lower range of the caps for Poker Stars, Bovada, and Carbon Poker, but certainly not what we have on our rake page. For that we apologize, but we will certainly work through these bugs. There was a backoffice update that caused a variety of errors including the table starter and rake issues. This has been a very enlightening bug as most ring game players are still earning over 100% of the rakeback which is now more and the affiliates are also earning more.

We are working with the software provider to get this fixed and will continue to provide updates at Betcoin.ag. Refunding players who have been overpaying is a bit more complicated because most players are actually getting more than they should! Do we take this away from them and their affiliates? We thank you for your support and will continue to work hard everyday. We just want this to be perfect for all of you and we will keep working hard until we get there. Great action on the tables right now and we will extend the 10 mbtc ring game promo!

Summary:

Betcoin dealt over 588,000 hands between November 14th and December 9th. Each pot that reached the threshold was likely overcharged during this time. I have yet to see a hand history suggest otherwise.

- Claimed:

Quote

The rake is actually programmed correctly in the system with the proper cap

and in the same sentence...

Quote

but appears to be capping at 2 ($0.82) for most tables 5 ($2.14) for some tables and the highest of 8 mbtc

- Claimed that refunding players would be complicated and then ignored the issue (over three weeks ago now) and refused to respond to comments LIKE THIS ONEfrom Dooglus.

- Seemed to be justifying their decision not to refund players by pointing out that some players (maximum of two per table) received 100% rake back for starting the table, they made affiliate payments based on the ammount they overcharged and also their rake is low compared to other sites.

Reality: I believe that 20 BTC is a pretty conservative estimate for total rake that Betcoin took but wasn't entitled to between November 14th and December 9th, mostly from the higher stakes players, who are less likely to complain or even care.