Full Tilt Warning

Today, October 14, Full Tilt Poker came out of nowhere and took aggressive measures to stop the use of our poker bot software at their online poker room. There was no warning given to anybody, and this was after years of tolerating us to such an extent that most of us felt they welcomed us with open arms.
 
To be certain, the use of such software has always been against their “official” terms of service. We all knew that. But for the past few years that part of their agreement was always perceived as being given with a wink. There are hundreds of us who have been active there on a daily basis and the overwhelming majority of us have never heard so much as a peep out of them. If they suddenly decided that they didn’t want us, given the fact that they have allowed us to proliferate unrestricted up to this point, one would expect a warning and a chance to stop using the software.
 
This was not their approach. They came out of left field and froze all our accounts and have confiscated all our funds. This was a very sudden and calculated move on their part. It would be difficult to describe their actions as anything other than stealing, if you understand the environment.
 
We were all taken by surprise and are somewhat shocked. We at Shanky Technologies now wish to offer a sincere apology to all our customers who have lost funds in this development. We are guilty of being lulled into submission by the permissive practices of this company and in fact have made statements, even recently, that we felt Full Tilt was a safe room to use our software at. Especially with all the stealth measure built into our poker  bots.
 
Those kinds of statements were never posted publicly on our web site or in our download materials however. We have always made proper disclaimers and given warnings about the risk involved on every page of our website and in our download materials. You are ultimately responsible for the risks you took in using our product.
 
However in private emails, and in some posts in our support forum, we did make statements that we thought the room was safe from this type of thing, given the long history of tolerance that we have there. And we are very sorry for that. We would never intentionally mislead our customers about the risks involved.
 
As an example, we get constant requests to support Poker Stars and Party Poker. We always have replied that those poker rooms have no tolerance for bots and as a result we will not even ever attempt to support them.  There is no point, as the risk is simply outrageous. So we always focused on poker rooms that are known for high “bot toleration” in their practices.
 
This has obviously now changed. Consequently we must seriously consider un-supporting Full Tilt poker. They apparently do not want us there anymore, and would rather have our account balances than our business. We see that as an incredibly unethical move on their part and must question anybody who wishes to continue to play there even manually. Look at the people you are trusting with your money. See what kind of people they really are. We would recommend not giving them even one more hand of business, whether you ever used a poker bot before or not. 
 
Who knows, one day they may take all your money because you visited Sharkscope.com or Tableratings.com and they scanned your browser history to find it. (Don’t laugh, the only way they are catching us is by blatant privacy violation and scanning your PC.)
 
If we decide to add more stealth measures and continue support, we will be issuing stern warnings about their history and the risks involved. Botting there will not be recommended by us again, ever. We think the way forward is to simply support other poker rooms instead, ones that have a more bot-friendly attitude.
 
As a reminder, we still support at least four other good rooms at the moment, and a couple of these have shown a great interest in having our bots play there. We think that “bot-friendly” is really the wave of the future, and that soon smart operators will realize how much online poker players love tinkering and playing with bot software and will make a “bots welcome” official policy as a result. Yes, we really do believe that or we wouldn’t be in this business. Some of our currently supported rooms are getting close to this in fact.
 
Some of you will stop botting because of this experience, or at least put it down for a while. But those of us who love this hobby will pick ourselves up and get back in the game at greener pastures. Shanky Technologies isn’t going anywhere. In fact we have exciting things planned in the near future.
Thanks for your understanding in this matter.
 
Sincerely,
 
Shanky Technologies team