Does GGPoker have bots?
By Raul Moriarty ·Poker Software Expert
Yes, in the one sense that can be checked from outside: GGPoker writes bots into its own rulebook as a banned category and has announced bans for automated and assisted play. What nobody outside the security team can give you is a share of tables or accounts. The only ban counts the operator ever published describe real-time assistance, which is a different animal, and they are from September 2020.
Short version
- The Security & Ecology Policy defines a bot as software that plays "without human intervention" or reduces the need for a human to decide or act, and puts AI and partly automated tools in the same bin.
- Published numbers: 13 accounts banned with $1,175,305.43 confiscated, 27 banned without confiscation, 40 warned (30 Sep 2020, RTA, not bots).
- GGPoker said then that it would not release detailed investigation reports again. We found no later bot-specific count on its own pages.
- Formats where automation is easiest are the ones where a suspicious table is hardest to judge by eye.
What is on the record
We went to primary sources only: GGPoker's own policy page, its own blog, and the vendor that sells the operator a screening tool. News sites provide context, never numbers. Pages were opened on 12 October 2026.
| Date | Source | What it says | What it does not show |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Sep 2020 | GGPoker blog, "Battle Against Real-Time Assistance" | 13 accounts banned, $1,175,305.43 confiscated "to be returned to players"; 27 banned, no confiscation; 40 warned. States that RTA "is detectable". Introduces in-game fair play reports. | Anything about bots. The post is about people consulting solvers while they play. |
| 2025 | GTO Wizard blog, "Supporting Operators in Protecting Online Poker" | GGPoker uses its Fair Play Check, which compares dealt boards against solver lookups; 31 accounts suspended on the first day of cooperation. | Automation. Matching boards to lookups catches a human with a solver open just as well as a script. |
| 1 Mar 2025 | PokerNews report on Fedor Holz | GGPoker's integrity ambassador talks of WSOP bans for those players. | Confirmed policy. PokerNews notes there was no official announcement. |
| Open on 12 Oct 2026 | GGPoker Security & Ecology Policy | Definitions of Bot and RTA, a penalty ladder, a right to scan a user's device, and "any decision rendered by the Security Team is final". | Detection methods, thresholds, or how many accounts were ever hit. |
Two aggregator sites dated January 2026 carry a story about 42 accounts and $1.2 million seized for "human-mimicking AI". The figures sit suspiciously close to the 2020 ones (40 accounts, about $1.2 million). One of the pages refused our fetch, and we found no matching statement on GGPoker's own pages, so the story stays out of the table. If you have a primary link, send it to us.
How the policy words it
The definition is broad. A bot is software, a program, a website or an app that "enable[s] playing without human intervention or reduces the requirement of a human to make decisions and/or execute actions", and the list explicitly includes "artificial intelligence, fully and partially automated bot". This second half means a tool that only clicks for you counts, and so does one that only chooses for you.
Confiscated winnings compensate the victims of the unfair play, and where no specific victim can be identified they go into a Network Ecology Improvement Fund. That matches the 2020 wording "to be returned to players", and it means a confiscation figure is also a rough measure of how much other players lost.
A separate clause bans any tool that aids "the execution of poker actions", naming RTA, bots, solvers, charts and HUDs, and another bans seating scripts and automated note-taking. The consequence list runs from a written warning through reward removal, suspension and account closure to a permanent network ban, plus confiscation. The policy says confiscation can reach "the main wallet as well as any pending withdrawals", and clause 1.10 reserves a right to scan the player's machine and, if something looks suspicious, associated files, to match them against profiles of "known illicit automated programs".
What the 2020 numbers add up to
The only dataset we have is small. The three groups sum to 80 accounts. Half of them (40) got a warning and nothing else. Thirteen, or 16 percent of the touched accounts, lost money, and the confiscation averages out to about $90,400 per account ($1,175,305.43 divided by 13). A bot farm of a thousand tiny low-stakes accounts would average far less.
The sanction was proportioned "to the frequency and severity" of use, and GGPoker added that it first checks whether GTO play happened and only then looks at other factors to decide whether RTA was behind it. Strategy quality is the first filter, which we also describe on the detection architecture page as the play-pattern layer.
Which formats are exposed
This part is our judgement, not a published fact. Automation is cheapest where the game tree is small, the decisions are repetitive and the stakes are low: six-max cash at NL10 to NL50 and the short-stack formats. Spin & Gold starts at 25 big blinds, so the whole hand is close to push-fold maths, and a table of three players leaves a human little to compare against. Deep multiway PLO and large-field tournaments have much larger game trees and bubble decisions that need ICM. Bots are most likely found in a repetitive, shallow format.
Our difficulty ranking by format is in the ecology section of the home page, and the developer FAQ covers why the same shallow formats are also where a solver baseline gets flagged first.
Weighing a suspicion at the table
Most suspected bots are fast regulars with a solver-trained strategy. Single signals are weak, and the operator itself says reviewers decide, so treat the table below as a way to decide whether a report is worth filing, not a verdict.
| Signal | Why it is weak alone | What makes it stronger |
|---|---|---|
| Identical think time on every decision | Auto-fold, auto-check and pre-selected buttons give humans instant actions too | Same delay on hard river spots and on trivial folds, over hundreds of hands |
| Never types in chat | Most humans do not either | Combined with no sit-outs and no break across a very long session |
| Strategy looks like a solver | Good regulars study solver output, and the operator uses the same lookup to screen for assistance | Bet sizes sitting on exact pot fractions and frequencies that never drift between sessions |
| Sessions around the clock | Different time zones and shared accounts exist | Many days with no gap longer than a few minutes |
The in-game report route that GGPoker described in 2020 was a flag icon on the Hand History page and a report window in PokerCraft. We have not re-checked the current client for the exact button, so look for it before you rely on this. Under the policy, the decision after your report is not appealable and the operator does not owe you an outcome.
Why a ban count would not settle it anyway
Suppose GGPoker published next week that it closed 500 accounts for automation, answering a narrower question than the one in the headline. Closures depend on detection capacity. A rising count can reflect more bots, better detection or a cleared reviewer queue. A falling count has the same three readings in reverse. In the 2020 post, the operator had just "re-dedicated" its efforts after a high-profile case, and the numbers are the output of a few weeks of new attention, not a census.
Comparing announcements made a year apart using the same counting method shows direction; one announcement cannot. GGPoker has said it will not publish detailed investigation reports, so that series does not exist for bots. We will revise this page the day a primary source for one appears.
What stays open
There is no public figure for how many active accounts are automated, and the 2020 sentence that detailed reports would not be released is the closest thing to an explanation for the gap. The penalty ladder does not separate bots from other violations, so even a future count of "accounts closed" would not isolate them. The 2025 screening results measure assistance through solvers. A script that never opens a solver window may or may not be caught by that route, and nothing on the record lets us say which.
For the related question of whether the operator's software can be hacked, see why GGPoker hacks do not work.
Sources
- GGPoker, Battle Against Real-Time Assistance, 30 September 2020: ggpoker.com/uk-ua/blog/battle-against-rta/
- GGPoker, Online Poker Security Ecology Policy (opened 12 October 2026): ggpoker.com/network/security-ecology-policy/
- GTO Wizard, Supporting Operators in Protecting Online Poker, 2025: blog.gtowizard.com/supporting_operators_in_protecting_online_poker/
- PokerNews, Fedor Holz Says WSOP Bans Are Coming for Online Poker Cheaters, 1 March 2025