Don't know how many tweets this 'thread' could turn into, but a serious discussion on site security. The problem with real-time assistance is here and it is very, very serious.

Not only that, the rampant usage of VPNs (mainly for American players to liquidise the high stakes traffic on GGpoker and partypoker) and the rise of affiliate deals and being able to create new accounts seemingly at will through this is a sure fire avenue for cheating to recur.

Russian community member TylerRM has accused a recent twitch streamer 'littlepoker' ( http://twitch.tv/littlepoker ) of being assisted in the 500 ABI games on GG/Party and, via his own screenshot the group of usernames under which he plays seem to have accrued half a million in profit.

These games are known by many to be amongst the toughest online. Whilst this sample is certainly small at a 'measly' 2300 games it is enough to prove just how alarming this problem is.

Here I have ran a very basic tournament variance calculation using the parameters of a 25% ROI player playing a 2300 game sample, 1000 times over in such fields. I have set the bar at 75 entries which seems fine for the tournaments in question.

The result is shocking indeed. Such a player would NEVER lose over any of the 1000 instances in which he played this 2300 game sample, and with mass re-entry even a player not grinding his heart out can amass this very easily over a matter of months.

TylerRM's thread on 2p2 (found here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/use-ai-888poker-1772229/) is a basic insight into some of the winrates that can be very easily obtained through the use of any kind of RTA. The games in question seem to suggest an abi in the 20s and 30s, games accessible for most poker players

To shift focus slightly, the alarming ease at which players can quickly shift from one ggpoker account to another (the easiest way to spot this is players with their location set to 'Albania', as it is top of the locations available when listed by alphabetical order)

Whilst I am not personally aware of this happening on partypoker, the rampant use of players employing Virtual Private Networks in order to access MTTs on the site also leaves me with little doubt that it would be very easy for players to regain access given the environment atm.

Hand histories. I don't know what solution there is to an RTA 'reading' boards on one machine and being able to access a wide database of presolved game trees on another machine on the same network via Hamachi in order to find a fast, precise answer to playing at low EV loss

The game simply needs an element of self-policing and the fact that poker is a game within which money is being wagered this could be a very difficult answer to find a question to. There is something very clear however, hand histories are NEEDED to combat this.

The online chess world has very similar issues, as in their game engines are simply better at playing than humans as it is the case in ours. Sites and players need to work together on this issue and it simply has to happen VERY soon, else online poker will simply be left to ruin.

The discussion could (and should in other forums) go on and on in more and more depth over both RTAs and the ease at which players can switch accounts and the like in online poker at the moment. With the current issues in the world halting live poker, something needs to be done.

One final point for this thread. The sites just likely don't know what to do about the situation, but clearly they benefit from the money they make from the continuation of the status quo. The people who do not benefit are those who could well be having their money stolen.