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Online Poker Bots Becoming Problematic?
scumbucket writes "MSNBC has a story about how poker bots have started to appear on internet gambling sites and the implications. It also talks about how a 'master level' poker-playing bot already exists. Could this proliferation of poker-playing bots undermine the almost $1 billion online gambling industry?"
I don't see what's wrong with it... if I could play against a poker-playing robot at a real casino, I would! People who write smart bots deserve the money, as far as I'm concerned.
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Poker is played against other players, not the house. The house makes money by taking a cut of every pot. Poker bots could undermine the industry by scaring off human players that can't play well against a bot. This will reduce the amount of pots that are being played, thus reducing the house cut.
I'm relatively sure that all of the online gambling sites use either Flash or Java applets to display cards and such. I wouldn't think they'd make it so easy as to give easy access to card names.
At first I was thinking that maybe this isn't fair to the other players... But then again if you think about it... As it stands poker is still a game of chance... A bot can only play optimum hands based upon the cards it sees and what it knows is still in the deck... This really isn't any different then a human player. If bots exist that are beating inexperienced players, how is this different from the poker pro who logs 10 hours of online poker a day?
When you break it down it still takes a skillful poker player to engineer a bot that can perform at a winning level...
Also the bots are betting someones money...
There is an inherent risk in online poker that the player at the other end of the connection has tools that he is using to gain a competative advantage, such as tools for counting cards, figuring odds and so on...
If you're looking for real human vs human action without worrying about cheat tools find a game in your neighborhood and go play there. Even though gambling isn't legal in all 50 states you can always find somewhere to play if you look hard enough.
First of, you DO get something when you gamble. You get the thrill of gambling. Anyone who walks into a Casino knows that chances are they are going to walk out with less money then they started. It is the fact that you might beat the odds and the thrill that brings that adds value. Saying that they are not giving you anything in return is like saying TV doesn't give you anything in return... sure it does. It gives you entertainment.
As to bots, they are not going to cause a Casino to loose money in any other way in that they might simply stop allowing certain games to be played online. If the game is a game where a strong pattern rec software can 'beat the odds' then they will simply get rid of the game, have their own bots play, or adjust winnings such that they still win in terms of dollar amount in the end. The only people who are going to come out loosers are people who who want to play online without a bot.
Well, many of these games are java based and require screen reading and physical clicking (or programmatic mouse clicking) to do what needs to be done.
I don't see why they make it sound so hard to code something like this. There are books out there that teach you strategy for poker and what to do based on when other things happen. If you could turn that into a programmatic routine, it shouldn't be hard to have a bot that wins more often than not.
Especially with online blackjack. Bots could make a killing on that. Between card counting and the what-do-I-do-when rules.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
...you don't trust other players to not be using bots, but you trust the house to not add their own player to every game and fix the host software to guarantee that the house's player wins???
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I have come to the conclusion that anything that has to do with money on the internet will eventually be hacked and exploited, why should gambling sites be any different?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
If you suck at playing poker and write a bot to do it for you, your bot will likely suck as badly as you do...
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Despite what ESPN would have you believe, there are a large number of people who play games other than "No-limit hold 'em'", namely Limit and Omaha. Each of those games are based FAR more on mathematical odds, probability, and having the nuts as opposed to the bluffing and gamesmanship required for No-Limit. It would be much much easier to program a bot that could play Limit and Omaha profitably. No-Limit and preventing collusion are a much more difficult task.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
Picking up on a bluff is overrated. Most of the time, players are not completely bluffing (i.e. they have a lowly but reasonable hand). What constitutes a bluff? In Hold 'Em if I go all in on an 8-man table while only holding two pair, is that a bluff? Maybe and maybe not. The important thing is that you still have to beat me. If you're worried at all that I'm bluffing then you probably have a weaker hand yourself. The guy with the full house isn't worried if I'm bluffing or not. He's going to bet into me because he thinks he's going to win.
Bots won't help you decide if someone is bluffing, but they will help you decide if it even matters whether or not they're bluffing.
While 'bots are a serious topic, there is a solution. Make the "user" periodically enter in some text that has been graphically morphed... something that only a human eye can recognize. It can be done in seconds, and that would eliminate the use of 'bots.
What I can't figure out is how the gambling industry is going to fight "group cheating". Put 4 or 5 laptops together, and have several people cheat the rest of the table out of their money by sharing their hands. It's not hard to do, and it's impossible to detect. Especially with wireless access.
I have a couple of friends that refuse to play online because it's impossible to stop this behavior in online poker.
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It doesn't "need" to do anything - however, if you come up with some ad-hoc or game-theoretic bluffing index, it can give advantage in spades. Kind of like a meta-heuristic.
Knowledge of bluffing is important, because coupled with a grasp of human psychology, it (potentially) gives more information about future game state than simple card probabilities will.
Even though technically they aren't so much beating the house as they're beating other players I agree with your sentiment in general.
I read "could this proliferation of poker-playing bots undermine the almost $1 billion online gambling industry?" and my first thought was "Fine by me, good riddance to them".
If it meant I never had to see another online casino pop-up ad then that would be a good thing.
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He was probably losing to himself as a way of laundering the money.
As it stands poker is still a game of chance
Skill plays a major factor in the long term. If it wouldn't, poker professionals would not be able to exist. But they do exist and they do earn a decent living. The reason why skill is so important is that odds are only part of the equation. Straightforward betting on good hands and folding when the odds are not in your favor is easily exploitable by just not calling the bets and bluffing to get the opponent to fold. So a good player must use deception. That element of deception turns the game into an unstructured game that is very hard to beat algorithmically, so I have my doubt about being able to create world-class bots.
If bots exist that are beating inexperienced players, how is this different from the poker pro who logs 10 hours of online poker a day?
The difference is that the bot doesn't have to sleep, eat, pay taxes, etc so there are much lower expenses for a bot and it can work 24 hours a day. That means that if good bots exist, they can be let loose at tables where most people play for fun and where it's currently not worth it for a professional player to play. Then the poker games will split up in very low limit games that nobody plays seriously and the high stakes games where only the best professionals can live. There will be no middle ground, but that is where most money is made for the casino's and where most semi-serious players play. The result might be that online poker loses its appeal to 90% of the players.
If you're looking for real human vs human action without worrying about cheat tools find a game in your neighborhood and go play there.
That's not really realistic, is it? First of all, online poker is different from 'live' poker because you don't need a poker face and a lot of players like that. Also, you can play it whenever you want, without having to coordinate schedules with other people. You also don't have to play with the same 9 neighbourhood guys all the time. Then there are more games to pick from online. You can play big tournaments online. You can play freerolls online, where you can win money for free. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Online poker is just a different ball game.
The article mentions in passing one other danger.. "Team Edition". It doesnn't mention details but it clues you to the the obvious way of successfully cheating.
Imagine the advantage of having two machines side by side EACH playing a hand in the SAME game. Not only would you know more cards in play, but more importantly you could always have the ability to use the stronger hand as your main betting hand, folding the weaker hand to avoid wasting money on it. The mathematical advantage of that must be Very Large.
Seems like this cheat would be undetectable, easy to do (two internet connections so they can't compare your IP #s), and doesn't require any bot coding at all.. very adaptable to any casino or player changes or questions.
Summary: you can't trust any online betting activity.
Beating a 0.5/1 table for 5-6BB/100 hands is considered destroying the game. You're claiming that you're beating it for about 40-50BB/100h.
Even if your bot is four-tabling, your alleged winrate is double what can be reasonably expected by an excellent player, simply due to the nature of the game.
It's a cute story, but next time try grounding your MIT tales of evil genius in a little reality.
Since bluffing is meant to fool human heuristics that judge the strenght of other players' hands based on those players' bets, why would a bot that works on probabilities NEED to consider bluffs?
Bluffs are also intended to foil human intuitive statistical analysis. The fundamental problem is that the strength of a perfectly rational player's hand can be determined from his bets. So the player must introduce noise or bias into his betting strategy to maintain the advantage of hidden cards. Since computers are even better at statistical analysis than humans, bluffing becomes more important, not less. The problem is that a bluffing strategy is itself subject to statistical analysis. Probably ultimately, there is no constant bluffing strategy that consistently beats sufficiently randomization.
I remember the first time I went to Las Vegas. I saw signs bragging about how "loose" each casinos slots were. Some bragged that they paid as high as 97%.
I just loved it, they ADMITTED that for every dollar you gave, on average you'd get back only 97 cents. To put it another way, you get better odds from a change machine.
It's my opinion that the stupid and ignorant should not have money. Casinos do a great job at ensuring that.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
On the other hand, a network of several bots playing *at the same table* could do some fairly serious damage over time, and with relatively uncomplicated heuristics.
;-)
Something to think about.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time playing poker in the casino knows to be on the lookout for colluding partners at your table. (i.e. Two or more friends sitting at the same poker table that are able to exchange information about their hands between each other or even to use various combined betting styles to bluff or raise the pot to artificial levels). When done properly, having a colluding partner at a poker table is a significant advantage for you. On the Internet it would be very easy to have, say 3 or 4 seats of a 10-seat table controlled by you. Or hell, have 9 of 10. Just load additional casino accounts into web browers that go through different gateways. Or any number of dozens of other ways to make it appear to be coming from a different machine.
I'm a big tall mofo.
This whole idea is sort of irritating. I play a lot of online poker, and yes it is possible to write a poker bot to do some basic strategy. In limit hold 'em this may be particularly true, but in no limit? You have to deal with a real valued scale of bets every time... this is by no means an easy problem to deal with. Writing a player that irritates people heads up is relatively easy - lots of aggression. However, writing a full featured poker bot to play no limit hold em and fleece tables? I don't think so. However, putting aside all the computational problems with this - they act like this will KILL ONLINE POKER. It won't. Consider this scenario. Your poker playing program only needs to 1) show your hole cards 2) show the board. Encrypt the transfer to and from the application. If you change the keys enough, this will will force the user to type in his hole cards and the board cards as they come out. Also encrypt the traffic such that the only commands accepted by the server are those that come from their downloaded applications only. This may require more sophisticated authentication in the program but it makes sure that if anyone wants to use a bot they have to 1) type in hole cards and board cards manually 2) click the buttons in the actual application, or emulate a mouse enough to do the clicking for you. This forces a human to be involved, and would make it pretty obvious which players are bots. You can also monitor suspicious play and send a human observer around to interact with players in chat and see what they have to say, this is an annoying solution but still it would solve the problem. Anyway, these are simple off the top of my head solutions to the bot problem. I am sure there are more. This is just a hyped up story, and nothing to be worried about.