It’s not a new scam, its been going on for years and there’s a lot more to it than is shown in this short strip. When Kit Chellel and Jonathan Raab published articles about it in 2024, most poker players were disbelievers, thinking it unlikely that sites would pit real depositing players against bots.

While many players are aware of the dangers of playing on a bot infested site, there’s still not enough awareness of the house bot scam. Sites that are set up to trap less experienced recreational players (and deluded regs who think they can beat the bots) are flourishing.

Most poker media don’t like to write about house bots, but some stories are hard to ignore, such as the recent uncovering by MTT Database Review of thousands of seemingly house deployed bots on the site QQPK.

Further Reading

• The Russian Bot Army that Conquered Online Poker by Kit Chellel on Bloomberg (paywalled)

• A Further Investigation into the Existence of the Botfarm Corporation by Jonathan Raab on Poker.Pro

An excerpt from Chip Guy’s recent appearance on the award winning poker podcast The Chip Race, with hosts David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney.

NSUS (the parent company) has already filed to have the case dismissed. It will probably never get to court, but if it does, the defence team could perhaps bat this away by highlighting Kenney’s participation in frog poison rituals, a practice that he allegedly engaged in and encouraged others to do.

Real time assistance is becoming a huge problem in online poker, how should violators be treated when they are caught?

After conceiving the idea, I made the first strip, Main Event Registration, which was done with a detailed script, using generative ai. All the words, concepts, design elements, frame layouts and configurations are mine, ai is only used to generate the images, not to create the ideas or the scripts. Within a week, i’d made a dozen strips and the ideas kept flowing.

It wasn’t until i had made over 40 strip that I started posting them, twice per week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. This began in late August. Sometimes the strips are very topical and there’s a need to publish additional strips per week, which has happened two or three times so far. There are also some strips which are posted first on Twitter, rather than here on Substack.

Chip Guy Extras is where strips that were published outside the main numbered schedule will be posted. Some of these are in-jokes for a small audience and not suited to wider release. I’ll explain the context when I post Chip Guy Extras, which is likely to be once per week (and not every week). Apart from this initial post, future Chip Guy Extras will be published on Sundays.

So, here’s the first Chip Guy Extras strip. This one is called Phone Ban and was created at the time when there was news of some poker venues banning the use of phones at the table, due to concerns about cheating by using cameras to peek at cards during the elevated pitch, the traditional way that poker has been dealt in America, for as long as anyone can remember.

In Europe, especially in the UK, there is a preference for slide dealing, which effectively prevents this form of cheating. Some US casinos have now adopted slide dealing in their poker rooms, rather than banning the use of phones.

The scene in this strip should be familiar to anyone who has seen the Martin Scorsese movie Casino.

Phone Ban was first posted on September 1st, in the comments sections of a Twitter post relating to this topic, but hasn’t been exposed to a wider audience yet. Should it be added to the main numbered collection? Let me know in the comments.

Chip Guy (Jonathan Raab)

Chip Guy starts streaming for a new crypto poker site.

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Will the jackpot PKO format take over online tournament poker?

The number of poker groups on Facebook has increased significantly in recent years, but they’re mostly just spamming invitation codes and online games that are vaguely connected to poker.

Early origins of gambling

Sometimes you just have to call it a day when you’re heavily outclassed at the poker table.

Chip Guy has a debt cancelled at the poker table and takes it literally.

Chip Guy #21 drops at 8.00am on Thursday.

Chip Guy set his goals and achieves success!

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What’s your opinion on poker events that take money from the prize pool to fund extra prizes to the top finishers? Tell Chip Guy what you think in the comments.

Chip Guy makes a final table, but the TD introduces a shot clock

Chip Guy gets an invite to join the media team at The Festival Series in Malta.

What’s next for Chip Guy? Next strip out on Thursday.

Chip Guy plays in the biggest heads-up poker match ever (maybe).

The next Chip Guy strip drops on Tuesday.

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Next Chip Guy strip drops on Thursday. Subscribe below for free for bonus content and early access to new strips.

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New Chip Guy strips every Tuesday & Thursday