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This is definitely an image problem for online poker. I had a conversation today with someone connected to one of the online poker sites that told me bots are now for sale on the net for $100. Many of the professional players realize these bots don’t play well, but for the avg Joe this is quite a turnoff. The poker sites are using software to dedect bot play, but I think collusion is a bigger problem. Now when you get bots that collude you are really in trouble.
Bots are possible and real but, as said above, they aren’t very sophisticated (yet). Building a basic bot that would only play the right starting hands should be very easy (and I guess it would win against bad players at very low stakes), but that is far from Deep Blue.
As for cheating.. It is more than likely 1% of what these people claim. Cheat sellers claim they can see other people’s cards, they can see this, they can see that.. the fact is that hands are processed on the main server so, short of hacking them, knowing someone else’s cards is impossible. The cards aren’t sent to the clients until the showdown is resolved. I’m not in the secret of the Gods, I can’t confirm that 100%, but anyone that ever programmed something will do it that way. Again, short of hacking the main server and knowing the algorythms used to decide the next card, cheating is VERY limited.
EDIT : As for bots colluding.. any software with even minimum collusion detection will raise the red flag on 2 players always on the same tables and always playing at the same time.. IE a table breaking and only having these 2 playing together for hours.
If you want to see bots playing, go to http://www.pogo.com ,pick texas holdem and pick “practice with robots”.
This wont be a problem for the future of the ‘poker market’… the casino’s that can protect against these bots will survive whilst the others wont. It’s like the software programmer/ software hacker battle, where everyone thinks that software companies will not be able to operate as hackers will give everything away for free.
It just won’t happen in the long run.
Have read many articles about bots and they say that the level of sophistication required to program a poker bot is enormous. Then there is detection of the bot and so on.
It is an issue to keep an eye on keep keep the card rooms ahead of the theives, but apart from that probably nothing to worry about at all.
Bart
I don’t feel that bots are a problem at all. It’s not that I don’t think they are being used, I just think any decent player will kill a bot. I would have no problem playing against a bot, or even several for that matter. Collusion can be a problem, but it is not very likely to be rampant until the higher levels.
I don’t think you will “kill” a bot in a few years, 5 at most. They are still far from perfect in a multiplayer environment, but they are getting increasingly sophisticated in heads up. It’s just a matter of time before good AI programmers are able to manage the complexity of position, betting patterns etc in a 10 handed or 6 handed context. Just my humble opinion.
Between, Phil Laak won heads up against the bot that had won a “championship”. However, out of the hundreds of thousands of people playing online, there are few pros like Phil Laak to beat a very well developped bot.
As for bots colluding.. any software with even minimum collusion detection will raise the red flag on 2 players always on the same tables and always playing at the same time.. IE a table breaking and only having these 2 playing together for hours.
well the thing about collusion is that you likely WON’T see two of same names at same table etc.
that’s the rub about the bots and collusion is that all they need be doing is using the same software and THEY will reckognize each other. Consider thousands of members using same software for their bots which as I understand it: can use the software on a second PC totally separate from the one you are using for your poker game and it somehow is able to follow the game without ever being in a position where the poker room cheat prevention software could ever even have a possibility of discovering the use of the cheating software.
So with that in mind, add into the mix that these software bots while not networked in any way thru the poker room, or the PCs which the player is using: are still very much networked to each other.
Its no big leap of the imagination to assume if the bots can “see” the game going on another PC, that they can also then figure out who amongst their membership are also sitting at that same table, … and adjusting play amongst the membership accordingly so as to tell the strongest hand to play, the weaker hands to either fold outright or else to fold after bumping a raise or reraise … all depending of course on the particular player’s position on the table in respect to the strong hand.
then once you’re down to only the membership players left, you’d of course then tell your software to not recommend anything in any way which would favor one of your members over another.
and I agree its nothing to worry about too much yet … however the time isn’t far away where I think it will become enough of a concern for the poker rooms to attempt to address the matter though I can hardly see how they can stop a deal which isn’t connected to the PC on which you’re playing the poker game?
I’d like to see that in an actual working case scenario.
And, all of these problems go away once you introduce something a bot can’t respond to, like the image recognition challenges we’re all familiar with.
Players can be sold on the idea once they understand it is there to prevent bots from playing. Now we just need to get the poker rooms to realize that all that rake generated by bots isn’t really good for them in the long run.
I know we could all do a bang-up job promoting “the first guaranteed bot-free poker room”. Whadya think?
Party Poker has pop up windows with image verification to combat bots.
Are you sure about Party Poker? I’ve never seen that.
BlackjackInfo wrote:Are you sure about Party Poker? I’ve never seen that.Positive. The pop up windows do not happen for every player; only for players who trigger a flag. i.e. duration of play, etc.
I’ll play a table full of bots.
At the moment, anyway.
Collusion is a bigger problem, IMO, but that’s probably mostly pot pumping in larger limit games.
In NL SNGs, I’m not too worried about collusion. Sure, they’ll get a little advantage. 2 at a 10 person table wouldn’t bother me. I don’t think 3 would bother me, either.
I agree that the issues need to be addressed.
Marcus is just yapping to sell his book imo.
I’d pay a whole lot more attention if you wrote the article Ken.
Thanks for the clarification acesup. That makes a lot of sense.
If PartyPoker has already implemented popups in suspicious situations, this problem is probably overblown.
Just a side note, we have updated our website, the link in the first post is no longer working, you can find the article ‘Online Poker ‘rife with cheats’ at:
-> http://www.gambling-pro.com/gambling_news/article.php?id=2132
