GGPoker Security Update!

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Poker Orifice

Poker Orifice

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GGPoker has introduced 5 new security measures as of Oct.14th with probably the biggest being a ban on 'ALL' third-party poker software and automation tools.
So, if you're hoping to use PT4 while playing tourneys on ACR & Stars and also hoping to be playing some tourneys from GGPoker, you're going to have to decide because it's one or the other.

Here's a list of some of the prohibited tools:

  • Jurojin
  • PokerTracker 4
  • Hand2Note
  • Holdem Manager 3
  • StarsCaption
  • DriveHUD 2
  • Intuitive Tables
  • Lobbyze
  • Equilab
  • AutoHotkey
  • Other third-party poker software and automation tools
I was recently watching a streamer doing a 'bankroll Challenge' this past week, ($2,500 > to > $10,000 in 10 days.... but they completed it in 6 days) and one of the things they were advertising/promoting was 'Bankroll Lab'. It looked great! I was thinking about purchasing it but was going to opt for the free 14 days trial first. But now, I guess that's out. It's really nowhere near as useful if you can't have it open while playing (one of the main benefits of it for MTT grinders is that you can access all tourney lobbys and you can set filters so you can have them all set to give you a warning when they are approaching max. late reg.). I feel bad for the guy who just produced this product.

I think its great that GGPoker is putting more effort into their site's security (especially after the recent mishaps, including the Moneytaker one) but sometimes I wonder if they don't take things a bit too far. AFAIK there's zero advantage of having PT4 or HEM3 running on your computer while playing on GG & yet they are still banned. Great for trying to monopolize the player pool but I think it sucks for the player.

I guess we will see what happens.

ggpoker.com

New Security Measures at GGPoker | GGPoker

Security is a never-ending battle. As new threats emerge, companies must continually improve their defenses and develop new solutions. Today, we are introducing five new measures to protect the online poker community. New Feature: Game Client Security We are introducing a new Client Security...
ggpoker.com ggpoker.com
 
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They don't want mass hand analysis from 3rd parties. 🤷🏼‍♂️
Software like PT4 and HM3 builds massive historical databases of hand histories over tens of thousands of played hands.
Players use these databases for Mass Data Analysis (MDA) to map out pool-wide tendencies and discover player vulnerabilities offline....but I don't have to explain that to you...

Under GGPoker’s Security & Ecology Policy, tools that facilitate database accumulation and offline pool exploitation are strictly forbidden.

The "No advantage " is in your head only
 
Some of these new measures seem like a good idea, that maybe all sites should have implemented a long time ago. But they are definitely using this recent cheating chandal, where some third-party tools were infected, as an excuse to ban all these. They have been back-and-forth about this, since at one point it was not allowed to have trackers running while playing on GG Poker, even though they dont work there, and people only did it, because they were playing simultaneously on another site.

Then apparently they got complaints about this and changed their policy, but now its back to a ban again. Which mean a player might get warned or even banned for having a program running, that does not even work on GG Poker, and the official excuse for this is, that GG Poker need to protect that specific player from getting cheated by others. Well thank you very much GG Poker, but maybe you could let people decide for themselfes, if they want to run that risk or not. Its basically no different from warning or banning people for having Netflix running on their computer while playing poker.

And frankly GG Pokers own security is a much bigger problem than the risk of infected third party tools. The Moneytaker scandal was them being so incompetent, that it was possible for someone to hack into their system and see their equity in the hand, even when they were not all-in. They banned this one account and distributed some confiscated money, but there might have been many other cases, that they just wiped under the carpet.

Plus it was not GG Poker security, who caught Moneytaker, just like they were also oblivious to the recent cheating scandal. It was players themselfes, who found out, something fishy was going on, by analysing hand histories. Something that GG Poker try to make as difficult as possible by not allowing trackers, not allowing sharkscope, and only allowing download of 10k hands at a time from their useless PokerCraft system.

G0930 said:
They don't want mass hand analysis from 3rd parties. 🤷🏼‍♂️
Software like PT4 and HM3 builds massive historical databases of hand histories over tens of thousands of played hands.
Players use these databases for Mass Data Analysis (MDA) to map out pool-wide tendencies and discover player vulnerabilities offline....but I don't have to explain that to you...
Click to expand...
You cant even import hands from GG Poker into these tools, so this is pure nonsense. They just want to monopolize the market by discouraging people from also playing on other sites while playing on GG Poker. Plus it was exactly such mass hand analysis by players, that exposed the cheating in the first place, not the completely useless security of GG Poker.
 
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fundiver199 said:
You cant even import hands from GG Poker into these tools, so this is pure nonsense. They just want to monopolize the market by discouraging people from also playing on other sites while playing on GG Poker. Plus it was exactly such mass hand analysis by players, that exposed the cheating in the first place, not the completely useless security of GG Poker.
Click to expand...
This is simply incorrect.
You can download your hand history and import it
These downloaded hand files can be imported into PT4, HM3, GTO Wizard, and other tracking software for personal post-game review
 
G0930 said:
This is simply incorrect.
You can download your hand history and import it
These downloaded hand files can be imported into PT4, HM3, GTO Wizard, and other tracking software for personal post-game review
Click to expand...
Their is no option to configure PT4 to import hands from GG Poker. Maybe its possible to export hands from that stupid and useless PokerCraft system and then somehow transfer them to PT4 up to 10k hands at a time. But this is then something, you need to do, when you are not playing. So it makes no difference at all, if PT4 is running during a session or not. GTO Wizard is not a tracking software by the way, its a solver. So its extremely clear, you have no idea, what you are talking about.
 
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fundiver199 said:
Their is no option to configure PT4 to import hands from GG Poker. Maybe its possible to export hands from that stupid and useless PokerCraft system and then somehow transfer them to PT4 up to 10k hands at a time. But this is then something, you need to do, when you are not playing. So it makes no difference at all, if PT4 is running during a session or not.
Click to expand...
Yes it is intended as offline study. hahahah I bet you never used Pokercraft - Does it matter? you get your hand history and can import it easily .
This is entitled crying on next level!
Using it while playing is plain cheating in my opinion.
You can't sit with sheets of solvers and tablet on the live poker table either 🙄

If you need constant live assistance to be profitable , maybe poker isn't for you
 
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G0930 said:
Yes it is intended as offline study. hahahah I bet you never used Pokercraft - Does it matter? you get your hand history and can import it easily .
This is entitled crying on next level!
Using it while playing is plain cheating in my opinion.
You can't sit with sheets of solvers and tablet on the live poker table either 🙄
Click to expand...
What exactly is it, that you dont understand? If PT4 is open, when the GG Poker client is open, absolutely nothing happen. As in zip, zero, nada. So why is it reasonable, that GG Poker want to warn or ban players for this? This has nothing to do with cheating or "entitled crying" or anything like that at all. Now personally I dont care much about this, because I only play on one site at a time anyway, and I rarely play on GG Poker. But I still think, its fair to point it out, when a site is engaged in total corporate bullshit, as is the case here.
 
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G0930 said:
hahahah I bet you never used Pokercraft - Does it matter? you get your hand history and can import it easily.
Click to expand...
Its kind of off-topic, but since you started, then lets talk about it. If you play cash games, then all your sessions and hands are stored in PokerCraft. Thats all well and good. Then if you want to analyse them in some way, you can select "last hour, last 24 hours, last 3 days, last 7 days or custom range"? Why is there no "last month, last year or all dates" option available?

And it gets worse. Because in "custom range" you can only select days within the same month. Like for instance 1. february 2025 - 28. february 2025. Everyone with a bit of understanding of poker know, that many statistics require a large sample to revert towards their mean. Yet GG Poker deliberately prevent players from analysing hands from more than a month at a time. Why is that?

Ok you might say, but GG Poker allow download of hands, so if you want to analyse a larger sample, you can just do that. Except that they only allow download of 10k hands at a time, and when hands are 3 month old, they can no longer be downloaded. A guy on 2+2 wrote to them and asked him to send him his 2M hand histories, which they refused to do.

And it gets even worse than this. Because the EV graph, which you can have displayed, but only for a month at a time, apparently does not include rake. So these are not even your actual results, but what you would have won or lost, if there was no rake. Which of course there is. A member of this forum wrote to them and asked, how much he had paid in rake. And again they refused to provide this information. How much more dishonest can it even get? And this is why, I call PokerCraft stupid and useless.
 
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GGPoker has tightened its rules on third-party poker software!

The decision has sparked debate across the poker community. Do you agree or disagree with the decision?
 
ItsThePits said:
GGPoker has tightened its rules on third-party poker software!

The decision has sparked debate across the poker community. Do you agree or disagree with the decision?
Click to expand...
What changes might those be?
 
ItsThePits said:
GGPoker has tightened its rules on third-party poker software!

The decision has sparked debate across the poker community. Do you agree or disagree with the decision?
Click to expand...
I think this decision will divide the poker community into two camps. On the one hand, stricter rules regarding third-party software can help create a fairer playing environment. On the other hand, many players use analysis tools for legitimate purposes and may consider the new restrictions too severe. It will be interesting to see how this affects traffic and the player experience in the long run.I think it's a good decision!I understand why GGPoker is taking this step. New and recreational players are often at a disadvantage when others use advanced analysis software.
 
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For each hand, our system will review each decision and determine whether it was correct based on the cards the opponent actually held. WAD looks for players whose decisions are correct far more often than any honest playing style allows, against cards they should not be able to see.
Click to expand...
That will be fun on this "any two cards will win" site.
 
G0930 said:
This is simply incorrect.
You can download your hand history and import it
These downloaded hand files can be imported into PT4, HM3, GTO Wizard, and other tracking software for personal post-game review
Click to expand...
Why would you need PT4 running while playing to do what you're saying?
I still see zero advantage while playing on GG if you have PT4 running in background for tourneys you're playing on other sites. (hence why they've allowed the use of it all this time after they had supposedly banned it in the past).

It also seems strange that I'm unable to track my rake paid on GG?

Some of the bigger scandals in the past have been discovered by players who were using tracking software. It actually helped me to feel more comfortable about the security of the sites knowing that there were players who were checking up on this stuff regularly. ie. In 2010 players bringing it to the attention of the PokerTableRatings site was able to bust a cash game Bot ring on Stars. Statistics gathered by PokerTableRatings were also used by 'players' to expose MTT & SnG colluders, playing on multiple accounts across multiple sites. For me this instilled confidence in online poker... even though I'd hear of cheating, I felt much more comfortable that the poker community was able to self police it. Now... we have to trust the online poker sites themselves... which in some cases has been proven to be not so capable.
 
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Poker Orifice said:
Some of the bigger scandals in the past have been discovered by players who were using tracking software. It actually helped me to feel more comfortable about the security of the sites knowing that there were players who were checking up on this stuff regularly. ie. In 2010 players bringing it to the attention of the PokerTableRatings site was able to bust a cash game Bot ring on Stars. Statistics gathered by PokerTableRatings were also used by 'players' to expose MTT & SnG colluders, playing on multiple accounts across multiple sites. For me this instilled confidence in online poker... even though I'd hear of cheating, I felt much more comfortable that the poker community was able to self police it. Now... we have to trust the online poker sites themselves... which in some cases has been proven to be not so capable.
Click to expand...
This is a key point. Most of the biggest known cheating scandals in online poker have been discovered by players themselfes and not the sites. And the hard truth is, sites dont have any incentive to combat cheating, unless it hurt their reputation. Cheaters pay rake just as much as honest players. So unless the cheaters win at some absurd rate, which typically require superusing, cheaters actually benefit the sites by creating more traffic and rake. So when sites combat transparency and self policing by players and say "trust us bro, we got your back", there is good reason to be highly sceptical about that.

With that being said these latest initiatives from GG Poker will make it easier to catch superusers, which in itself is a good thing. And trackers were already not working on GG Poker, so its not like, this is something new. The only new thing is, you can no longer play on GG Poker and then simultaneously play on another site like 888 Poker or PokerStars with your tracker running. Which I guess sucks for high stakes players. But if you are a low stakes grinder, it really does not matter, because there are already more games running on GG Poker, than you can realistically play.
 
fundiver199 said:
This is a key point. Most of the biggest known cheating scandals in online poker have been discovered by players themselfes and not the sites. And the hard truth is, sites dont have any incentive to combat cheating, unless it hurt their reputation. Cheaters pay rake just as much as honest players. So unless the cheaters win at some absurd rate, which typically require superusing, cheaters actually benefit the sites by creating more traffic and rake. So when sites combat transparency and self policing by players and say "trust us bro, we got your back", there is good reason to be highly sceptical about that.

With that being said these latest initiatives from GG Poker will make it easier to catch superusers, which in itself is a good thing. And trackers were already not working on GG Poker, so its not like, this is something new. The only new thing is, you can no longer play on GG Poker and then simultaneously play on another site like 888 Poker or PokerStars with your tracker running. Which I guess sucks for high stakes players. But if you are a low stakes grinder, it really does not matter, because there are already more games running on GG Poker, than you can realistically play.
Click to expand...

Agree with everything 100%... except for the last line. It's nice to be able to cherry pick the tournaments you feel are the best for yourself & by being able to select them from 4 or 5 sites is better than just playing them all on GG imo. ie. I prefer the field sizes on some of the games on Partypoker. I prefer the structures of some on ACR. I prefer to play with the tons of fish on SB &/or BOL & I like to play on some of the games on Pokerstars. fwiw, the structures on GG are pretty much all turbo like. In later stages stacks are REALLY shallow.
 
Poker Orifice said:
Agree with everything 100%... except for the last line. It's nice to be able to cherry pick the tournaments you feel are the best for yourself & by being able to select them from 4 or 5 sites is better than just playing them all on GG imo. ie. I prefer the field sizes on some of the games on Partypoker. I prefer the structures of some on ACR. I prefer to play with the tons of fish on SB &/or BOL & I like to play on some of the games on Pokerstars. fwiw, the structures on GG are pretty much all turbo like. In later stages stacks are REALLY shallow.
Click to expand...
Thats fair enough and each to their own I guess. I personally always preferred the simplicity of having only one site running. But if you prefer to play across sites, then I think, the obvious choise after this is to say goodbuy to GG Poker and continue with the other sites. If you have 4 other sites to play on, you dont really need GG Poker.
 
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