GAME INTEGRITY

PokerStars believes its customers deserve a safe and reliable place to play online poker against real people. We believe in a level playing field and vigorously police our poker games using a variety of cutting-edge techniques to make sure that’s what you get. The Game Integrity department’s mission statement is: “To provide the best online gaming experience by protecting players’ interests and the integrity of our games, through objective and fair investigations.”

Although the vast majority of our players are happy to play within the rules, there will always be a small number of individuals looking to gain unfair advantages. We don’t condone that and take every effort to provide the safest poker games online, investing millions of dollars every year to develop and deploy industry-leading game integrity software and best practice.

The PokerStars Game Integrity department, which is made up of around 60 specialists, ex-professional poker players, qualified data scientists and statistical analysts, use purpose-built software to detect, investigate and resolve potential occurrences of collusion, multi-accounting or prohibited software use.

We value your trust and we work hard to earn it every day. Our automated systems run 24/7 and flag accounts for investigation, which are then subject to closer analysis by our specialist teams. We’re proud that up to 95% of all cases that are found to have breached our General Terms are first detected by our internal processes.

The PokerStars Game Integrity team operates a peer review system so that all investigations undergo rigorous examination. When a Game Integrity agent investigates a case, they provide a recommendation for its resolution to a second agent who then conducts their own review. If their conclusions are not the same, the case will be reviewed by a third agent to create a majority decision. An expert QA (quality assessment) team also regularly reviews cases to ensure that investigations have been correctly carried out and that no stone has been left unturned.

We’re committed to investigating every player report, so if you think something isn’t right contact us at gameintegrity@pokerstars.com. We promise to look into it.

We review the action and big winners in all our major tournaments on a daily basis to make sure no one misses out. If we have reason to suspect anyone has broken our General Terms, we take steps to freeze that player’s account while we conduct a review. If a player is found to be in the wrong then the prize money is always redistributed to the other players in the tournament, as is right and proper.

We invest millions of dollars in Game Integrity to stay ahead of technological challenges and capitalise on new opportunities, including those presented by Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and bots, learning from the billions of hands in our database. We have dedicated teams working in these areas to help keep the game fair, looking at ways that they will aid us in our primary objectives: offering the best playing experience, providing the most rigorous customer protection, and delivering the highest standards of game integrity.

We believe that hand histories should always be available to players. Not only do they allow you to review your play and improve your game but they also provide transparency and accountability. We consider them to be the poker receipt you receive after you’ve played a hand.

If you’d like to find out more about the PokerStars Game Integrity team and practices, please visit our FAQ page here.