QQPK’s response to a community-led bot investigation expanded on Oct. 15, when the poker operator said it had permanently banned 893 accounts and created a $300,000 fund to compensate affected players. The update superseded its Oct. 13 announcement that 724 accounts had been permanently removed for unauthorized automated play.
The case began with an analysis posted to the Two Plus Two forum on Oct. 9. Pokerfuse reported that the review had identified 2,587 accounts with bot-like behaviour after examining millions of hands. The researchers analysed about 4.18 million hand histories, representing roughly 26 million player hands in 27,936 tournaments played from July 2 through Oct. 2.
The investigators highlighted recurring statistical similarities, similar preflop decisions, round-number three-bet sizing and repeated limp-three-bet patterns. They also reported unusual all-in outcomes, estimating that suspicious accounts ran about 138,700 big blinds above equity expectation across nearly 194,000 qualifying all-ins, a deviation calculated at 14.6 standard deviations.
Those all-in findings did not establish that QQPK or its random-number generator had been manipulated. The researchers said they had neither demonstrated operator involvement nor identified a confirmed mechanism for the results.
QQPK initially opened a server-side review of all 2,587 flagged accounts and temporarily restricted withdrawals while it assessed cases. Its Security and Risk Control teams confirmed Oct. 13 that 724 accounts had breached the terms of service through unauthorized automated play; those accounts’ access and associated balances were permanently restricted.
In its Oct. 15 update, reported by SoMuchPoker, QQPK said the bans comprised 567 accounts from the community’s original list and 326 accounts found through the operator’s internal review. It said the other 2,020 flagged accounts had not shown the same direct cheating patterns and remained subject to restricted monitoring and further checks.
The operator described the main source of suspicious activity as a coordinated cheating syndicate that allegedly used multiple accounts at the same tables to share real-time hole-card information. QQPK said its internal examination found no evidence of random-number-generator manipulation, a conclusion that had not been independently verified, unauthorised backdoor access or a means to view unrevealed hole cards.
QQPK attributed the abnormal all-in results to collusion and limitations in the external dataset, saying it contained millions of duplicate hand records that inflated the reported statistical deviations. It maintained that its random-number generator was fairly operated and held Gaming Laboratories International certification, and offered anonymised hand histories for external examination.
The $300,000 compensation fund consists of $64,627 confiscated from banned accounts and $235,373 contributed by QQPK. The company said it would publish affected-tournament details and compensation calculations by Oct. 17, before crediting eligible players, and planned to reward the external researchers and involve them in future integrity initiatives.
