First about bots. I`m still reading 2+2 to see whats going on in poker world so I`m familiar with that paticular incident at AP/UB and iPoker and Full Tilt. Just because there are cases where bots do get caught, and majority of those bots were caught by players not poker sites, and bots caught turn out to be slight winner or slight losers w/o rakeback and winners with rakeback, doesnt change the fact that those bots on Full Tilt and Cereus were the ones beign sold on that bot site. So, those are "comercial" bots. Would someone sell a bot that is making good profit from play only, add rakeback to that too? Would You do that? I dont think so. Once that bot is on the market poker sites can buy it and then look for ways to detect it automatically, by not selling it you would be protecting long term profit. This bot that is being sold is probably some downgraded version of the bot that person who coded that bot is probably still using releasing only inferior versions of it. Most likely more than slightly downgraded. How many bots can go undetected if they are set up to act like human, mentioned bathroom breakes, occassional "nh" in chat box and even tilt messages. Havent you notice since you play frequently that there was a massive number of players writing "nh" in chatbox frequently, some 4 or 5 years ago. Eventually it came to present situation where chat is not that filled with "nh".
About Merge, this was long time ago. Incident occurred 2 years ago, maybe more. At that time Merge was still not supported by any hand tracking software so I probably deleted hand histories Merge client stores, I think I did copied entire HH folder because of theirs stupid max 30 day limit, but most likely they are gone now because I performed manual clean up of my backup drive few months ago and I believe I removed bulk of raw HH folders including Merge ones. I`ll look for them but dont hold your hopes high, they might have surivived the clean up if they are somewhere where I wouldnt expect them to be. Now you wonder how could they exchange hand histories if HEM and PT didnt support this network. I really dont know the real reason for them not supporting Merge but it was not that complicated to write the code that will translate Merge histories, I dont know in which format they are being saved now but they were in xml format back then, into something compatible with PO, HEM or PT. I, myself began coding such converter but was so dissapointed with response that I stopped both playing on Merge and coding that converter. Before I started coding this I filed 2 or 3 requests/complaints to KGC asking them to force Merge make their histories compatible with one fo the tracking software but nothing changed over 3-4 months period and I started working on my own converter and it was even before that first hand converter appeared on the market, soon after HEM introduced Merge update. Soon after my report to their support, 3-4 days one week max, entire ring stopped playing so they most likely did get banned from one site at least if not entire network. Also, it was not that long after this that some site offered Merge hand converter.
I was trying just now to find is there something available on the net today about them, I remember one account screen name very clearly even today, but that forum is gone and person behind that screen name announced in Sep 2009 on some other localized forum that he will stop playing poker because of his girlfriend. His trail ends pretty much there and I forgot other names. Was he telling the truth or he just gave up his screenname which he used almost everywhere, I dont know. But they sure did collude when they were playing, no doubt about that.
about that quote you posted from 2+2.
2. Are so profitable to play against its silly. They will fold ~85% of their opens to 3bets REGARDLESS OF BET SIZE! Same goes for their blinds. Basically I click the raise button everytime they have money in front of them and they rarely RARELY continue.
Back in days when William Hill was on Cryptologic they used house bots to fill and start tables. They still do but, all of their bots on Crypto had screennames starting with "bot" so it was not hard to spot them. Those bots didnt fold small 3bets often in fact i dont think they folded any small bet, allins they called with good hands but they did call 3bets with wide range of hands, exploitable yes, but what was the problem then? Problem was that more than you would like to see those bots called with some really marginal hands and were catching backdoors like hell. Suited not connected, connected not suited. It seemed like system had memorized how much you won from bots and fixed the game in a way that bots didnt win or lose, you played with bots on break even basis over the long term, I repeat it seemed never did I put that in numbers. On FLHE tables those bots really excelled and were even harder to play against. They were changing tactics to loose if table got tight, tighten up if table got too loose. They would catching your CBETS as normal player would do and this was in 2006 or `07. I can only imagine how much did bots improve since then. If you really want to know I`ll look at my Moneybookers history to see when was the last withdrawal from them because I didnt play there since they were on Crypto.