Ever wonder how we stop people from creating duplicate accounts and cheating?
It's Been ... Difficult
Since we started this league on Bluff Ave's website, it's been a part-time job to keep those trying to cheat out of the games. Back then we couldn't see IP's and had to rely solely on checking Steemit accounts manually to see if they were real people or not, which is not exactly an easy task at times.
Cheaters Gonna Cheat
We surely haven't been able to catch every single person that's tried to game the system, but I bet we've come pretty damn close considering we have one person doing most of it all by themselves. So what do we do?
- Check each users Steemit Reputation and delete any below 30.
- Check for an introduction post.
- Scan their comments and replies to look for signs of a bot or complaints.
- Check their wallet and try to determine who funded the account if possible.
But we didn't stop there!
Batch Payments Rep Check
Account Verification
We also just completed our custom Account Verification tool between the web server and poker server so users can still create a web account on our site, but their access to the poker server will remain pending until we verify them.
After a user creates a new account, our new AV system automatically emails the player letting them know that their account is pending approval.
Here's an example email :
Pending
The new player will remain in a "Pending" status until we've verified their account and approved it. They will see a notice on our homepage when they try to access the poker server, notifying them that their status is "Pending".
Once the new users account is Accepted or Denied they will again be notified via email and will either gain access to the poker server or will be shown a "Denied" status and will not be allowed to click play to access the poker server.
What About At The Tables?
- We check for duplicate computers.
- We check for duplicate IP's.
- We check for duplicate Steemit accounts (now automated with AV Tool).
- We check for stack dumping.
Outside of that, like most large poker sites, we rely on our community of well known players to draw attention to any players doing anything suspicious at the tables. We also ask them to be vigilant in scanning new users with us and alerting us to anything we may have missed.
For instance, if a Steemit user has a high enough reputation to qualify, is obviously not a bot themselves, but is running games on Steemit and not paying them out to players or it appears that the players are actually their own bots, we will and have banned those players.
We do not want to be rewarding people running scams on Steemit or doing anything nefarious, but to catch these acts we have to rely on other players at the table to call it out and alert us to it so we can analyze the hand history and make a determination.
In most all cases, there's really nothing that looks suspicious and it's a judgement call, until it becomes a repeated issue. Then it's more noticeable, especially if the same players are involved in the hands. To date, we haven't had an issue with this outside of one case we really couldn't prove, but banned one user anyway for another reason.
So that's a wrap up of our new tool and how we handle people trying to game our system. If you have any questions leave them below!
Thanks
Thanks to everyone who continues to support 
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