QQPK Raises Permanent Bans to 893 in Cheating Investigation
The operator set aside $300,000 for affected players while 2,020 more flagged accounts remain under review.
- QQPK permanently banned 893 accounts after identifying a coordinated group that shared hole-card information across accounts at the same tables.
- The operator created a $300,000 compensation fund, including $64,627 confiscated from banned accounts.
- The action followed a community investigation that flagged 2,587 accounts, while 2,020 accounts remain under restricted monitoring.
- A separate analysis by Vojtech Cervinka listed 11,469 suspected bot nicknames, a count that does not necessarily represent distinct accounts.
QQPK has permanently banned 893 accounts after an internal investigation identified what the operator called a coordinated cheating syndicate. The group used multiple accounts at the same tables to share real-time hole-card information, giving its members information unavailable to legitimate opponents and influencing preflop decisions.
The action expanded QQPK’s Oct. 13 announcement that 724 accounts had been banned following community reports. Of the eventual 893 permanent bans, 567 came from the original external list of suspected accounts and 326 were identified by QQPK’s own Security and Risk Control teams.
The operator has set aside a $300,000 compensation fund for affected players. It said $64,627 was confiscated from banned accounts, while QQPK supplied the remaining $235,373. A further 2,020 flagged accounts did not show the same direct cheating patterns, but remained under restricted monitoring while checks continued.
The case began with a player investigation published on the Two Plus Two forum on Oct. 9. It examined about 26 million hands from 27,936 multi-table tournaments played from July 2 through Oct. 2 and flagged 2,587 accounts for suspected automated play based on recurring statistical patterns, similar preflop choices and highly consistent betting behavior.
QQPK temporarily restricted withdrawals from those 2,587 accounts on Oct. 10 while it began a server-side review. It later said abnormal all-in EV results were caused by coordinated card sharing and limitations in the original dataset, including millions of duplicated hand records that it said inflated the reported deviations.
QQPK apologized for its systems failing to detect what it described as a novel method earlier. It said its internal review found no evidence of random-number-generator manipulation, backdoor access or a way to view unrevealed hole cards through its systems. Somuchpoker noted that the conclusion on the RNG had not been independently verified.
The operator maintained that its RNG is fair and said it holds a Gaming Laboratories International certification. It also offered anonymized hand histories for outside examination and invited external researchers to help improve future security measures.
The 893-account total is far below a separate assessment published by Vojtech Cervinka, who released 11,469 QQPK nicknames he said he was “virtually certain” were bots. His research covered July 16 through Oct. 11 and reviewed 24 million player-hands across 3.78 million hand histories. He estimated that roughly 17.5 million hands, more than 70% of those examined, were played by bots.
Cervinka’s list used behavior-based criteria rather than names alone, and he said hundreds more suspicious nicknames lacked sufficient hands for a high-confidence classification. The list counted unique nicknames rather than necessarily distinct underlying accounts, because name changes could affect the total. It also identified repeated naming formats as circumstantial evidence of bulk account creation, rather than proof that each individual account was automated.
QQPK said it would publish the affected tournaments, account details and compensation calculations by Oct. 17, before crediting eligible players directly.
