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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?"
Casinos are out to make a buck, with little regard for the welfare of future of the players. They don't care if an addict comes in with all of his life savings, and blows it all in one sitting.
A business that has millions, but really gives you nothing for your money in return, deserves a good stinging pinch like this.
Poker won't be the only one to have bots. Blackjack can be easily played via pre-defined rules. In fact, it's a lot easier to make a bot for Blackjack than for poker, since Poker is more affected by bluffing, and human interaction. That's why most poker players wear sunglasses, and show little emotion. Hence the phrase "poker face".
I guess in summary: "Online poker bots becoming problematic?"
Sure, but problematic for whom? The casinos are notorious for putting a winning blackjack player on a blacklist, and not letting them in. Why? Did they cheat? No, they just won, and casinos hate to lose money.
Bots are problematic for casinos, but is that something to cry about?
Of course, if you don't like casinos, don't go to them. They only exist
to fulfill a need/desire that many people have, and unless that goes away, they'll continue to exist.
'master level' poker-playing bot
Stop calling me a bot.
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.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
Here is the original post I sent on twoplustwo, as quoted at
;-) in the
the end of the news. Despite the desperate tone of the article,
I'm not depressed (;-) and I'd be interested to see bots fighting
on the poker server (Free Software) I work on at http://gna.org/projects/underware/.
---
Disclaimer: I do not favor bots, I do not develop bots, I won't
be happy if there are more bots than humans in online poker rooms.
From a technical point of view, no poker client will ever be able to
detect a bot that analyzes the window layout (to find cards, bet
amounts, player names etc). It could attempt this detection when the
bot runs on the same machine although it is likely to require frequent
updates (think anti-virus software). However, if the bot runs on
another machine and watches the display remotely, it is just
impossible (VNC is a example software that watches a display from a
remote machine).
From a legal point of view, international and national laws in most
countries (+200 of them, including US and all Europe) strongly
protects interoperability between programs. It means that the author
of a program whose sole purpose is to encode/decode the protocols or
file formats used by another program can never be sued on this basis.
Online poker rooms can forbid the use of any computerized assistance
(except the mouse, the screen and the operating system
terms and conditions that each player accepts when registering. A
contract is a powerful tool to attempt to force people to forfeit
rights that cannot be taken from them. Although the poker room may win
a lawsuit against a player using a bot that plays on his behalf, there
are more cases where they would lose.
For instance, if my only machine is running GNU/Linux, the court may
rule that I'm entitled to use my own client because there does not
exist a client except for Windows. Ruling otherwise would mean that
the poker room can force me to become a Microsoft customer. A real
world poker room can force you to wear a tie but cannot force you to
wear a tie of a given brand. This can have precedence over contract
terms and conditions. Furthermore, the features provided by my client
software (such as automated play or statistics gathering) cannot be
restricted by contract. No matter what is written, no third party can
legitimately control or restrict the software you run on your own
machine. If that was the case, no doubt a large software publisher
would state in its operating system license contract that all software
running on top of it must be purchased from them.
Summary:
. Bots can't be detected.
. Bots can't be outlawed.
. Poker room terms and conditions are inefficient to forbid bot
usage.
Will there ever be a widely spread bot able to beat most players
currently playing in online poker rooms ? I think so. It may already
exist but is kept secret. It's only a matter of time before a talented
poker player who also happens to be a good developer decides she or he
wants to be remembered as the author of the first bot that changed
online poker forever.
~
...with being an ass-hole."
-- Henry Rollins
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have little sympathy for the house when someone figures out a way to beat them.
I wouldn't be surprised at this at all - I've even heard rumors of people playing online chess while using Chessmaster to tell them their moves.
It was, um, a friend of mine...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
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.
"The University of Alberta's Computer Poker Research Group has developed an artificially intelligent (poker playing) automaton known as "Vex Bot," "
At last! We Canadians have a piece of technology that can make us as proud as the mighty Canadarm!
Three Squirrels
I've used the program. It's available at pretty much every torrent site. It's not so much a bot as something that tells you the odds of what you have a chance at getting versus what it thinks the other players might have. It then recommends what your next step should be.
It's not like this thing wins games for you. It basically does what the good poker player can do, look at their cards, look at the cards on the table, and then compute odds.
It's less useful than the article makes it sound.
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
When I was 8 years old I played with an AI program called Eliza on a teletype machine. My 8 year old friend and I were convinced for about 30 minutes that this was a real person on the other side. It's been a long time since those days, adn AI programs have only gotten more convincing. I've seen bots do pretty well in Counter Strike, to the point where several players thought that the Bots were real people. In poker, you are talking about alot of money. Money is motivation to create a poker AI. Online poker is mostly about statistics anyways, and a computer is great at figuring out odds.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
No, but they can deliver more life-like performances.
-Peter
PS: I say this in spite of the fact that "Chasing Amy" is one of my top 5 favorite movies.
-P
until someone accidentally uses an aimbot, and blows a guy's head off.
Why should it really be a concern? I mean, poker companies will still be making money, and as long as nobody's cheating, what gives if the next person is a human or a bot?
Machines are no intellectual match for humans (at least for now). At least not for most humans. Given the fact that poker is a game of chance (unlike say chess, in which randomness has no play), a bot can only be as good as the expert that has created it.
It seems that they are obviosly talking about the two legged, two armed kind. Hahaha, that is priceless to think that our there in someone's basement is a "sophisticated robot" capable of playing online poker. I think I'm going to start building one in my garage.
I boycott signatures
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.
I'm the head webmaster and programmer for a popular casino based in the Cayman Islands (although I reside in the US). We use VBScript for all our programming and backend work. We're smart and renamed the cards, so the "ace of spades" is really "5_hearts.jpg"
No one will figure that out.
That's nothing, when I play poker I'm a machine.....an ATM machine :-)
it's easy to find software that is designed to follow along with the current game, giving you the statistically best move based on what is known, such as the face-up cards, who is on the button, and what your cards are. They also give you a gauge making it easier to decide whether to call or fold a hand. After seeing this type of program in action, it's turned me completely off of putting any real money into online poker.
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...
I'd say your reply is slightly uninformed. Casinos don't adjust the payoff of any given game. Rather, they play the odds.
Look at it this way -- on any given night, in any given casino, there might be one or two players who play extremely well, several more who are pretty good, and literally hundreds who play like crap. The casinos make most of their money on that last group, and dole out a relatively small sum (compared to what they're taking in) to the truely gifted players.
The fact of the matter is, the odds aren't in your (the proverbial your) favor. Odds are, you (proverbial) play like crap, or in a game where there is a human element (poker), the dealer plays better than you do. If you happen to get lucky, or happen to be good, well, there are a hundred other people who aren't, and who don't.
Ack!
...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
Recently I was browsing www.suprnova.org for obscure torrents in their misc area, and I found this "ebook" on how to win texas hold 'em. I downloaded it hoping that it was some kind of strategy guide or an odds list or something
turns out it was just some product promotion for a company that makes gambling bots.
I downloaded the software trial out of curiosity (I've never played online poker before, I just wanted to see how the program was set up.)
The way it worked (or claimed to, I never tried it) it would monitor my poker game and make calculations based on other people's bids checks or folds and give me tips about whether I should fold, check, bid, or bid high. It kept a percentage rating for probability of wining and stuff like that.
Basically it claimed to play the game for me, which would suck as I was looking for a strategy guide instead. I can't remember which one it was that I downloaded.
here's a link to one of them
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
First of all, a black jack bot would be a silly idea. Black jack is a game that cannot be beaten in the long run. Played at it's best, the house still has a 2% advantage, which over the long haul will translate into certain losses.
Regarding a poker bot, I'd love to play against one. Most people play like bots anyways. Many players tend to take pre-determined actions in a given situation. (Hold 'Em: 6-handed game in early position with a A-Q off suit, etc etc) So what's the difference?
Certain poker games, like 5-card draw perhaps, might lend itself to a greater opportunity to create relatively "skilled" bots, but games like Texas Hold 'em require so much of a human element to them that there's simply no way you could create a bot that could challenge people with even the slightest level of master of the game.
I've played poker since I was 5 years old, and feel that I know many of the games pretty thoroughly - and am a very consistent winner at home games, and the casino. I'm also a computer programmer, so I think I have a relatively "informed" view on the topic.
No way! Coming from personal experience, I've played on-line and at the casinos. Bluffing is a big part of strategy in poker, and seeing the facial experssions is key. On-line poker could compete with webcams, but how many people would go through that extent? No one I know. The older folks probably want to get away from their spouse and kids. Also, the atmosphere at the casino is part of the adrenaline rush... hearing the constant noise, seeing tons of people, and getting free drinks. Playing in your pijamas without having to wash up might be alright occasionally, but I believe the vast majority of players will still drive to the casino to fully immerse themselves in the poker pit over.
It is about time that someone or something take the edge out of gambling. But no matter what the casinos or 'the house' will take their share. It will just eliminate the difference between the good card counters and bad ones. It is now how much risk do you want to take instead of if I am making a mistake calculating the odds.
Go Bots !!!
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Hmmm that's why fred#3079-beta1 would never answer any of my questions.
and explain why I am broke.
Johnny Chan: I'll see your $30,000 and raise you $5,000
...
Stu Ungar: Call
L33t Pl4y3r69: Call
Dealer: Ok gentlemen, lets see your hands
Johnny Chan: Flush
Stu Ungar: Full House
L33t Pl4y3r: 5 Aces!!! 0WN3D n00bs!!1!11
Dealer:
Johnny Chan: OMG HAX!!
Stu Ungar: WTF?? Lag!!
Exactly right. They may give an advantage to a beginning player over other beginners, as they'll advise players not to do really stupid things, but they in no way elevate a player past an average poker player.
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
who the 'bots are. Strike up a conversation with your fellow on-line players. Something like...
Holden: You're in a desert, walking along when - Leon: What one?
Holden: What?
Leon: What desert?
Holden: Doesn't matter what desert it is, it's completely hypothetical.
Leon: Well, how come I'd be there?
Holden: Maybe you're fed up. Maybe you just wanted to get away from it all. Anyway. You're in a desert, walking along when you look down and you see a tortoise, Leon. It's crawling toward you. Leon: What's a tortoise?
Holden: You know what a turtle is?
Leon: 'Course!
Holden: Same thing. So you reach down and flip the tortoise over on its back, Leon.
Leon: Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden? Or do they write 'em down for you?
Holden: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
Leon: WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I'M NOT HELPING?
Holden: I mean you're not helping, Leon.
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
...so what's the problem?
Oh wait, this was about poker? Sorry.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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.
I had a debit/ATM card compromised somehow last year. There wasn't very much in the account at the time, so the guy set up an account "for" me at a poker site and tried to gamble my balance up. He lost a few hundred. I noticed the withdrawls a few hours later and called the bank, after finding that my wife and I didn't have enough money to go out to a nice dinner that night. (The charges hadn't posted and were labeled as "ATM/POS activity", so I didn't know how they were spent. I just knew it wasn't me.)
I called the bank and while I was on the phone with the bank rep, more weird charges were coming in! We were both watching someone gamble away all my money in real time. So he red flagged them all and gave me a claim code.
The next day the phone rings. "Hello, this is Planet Poker..." and without thinking I say "No thank you" and hang up. The phone rings again a few minutes later. "Planet Poker..." and I say "please take me off your list" and hang up, still thinking it's a telemarketing call. Which sounds stupid given the withdrawls the day before, but I didn't put two and two together. (It was Planet Poker calling me to welcome me as a new degenerate gambler / customer.)
The phone rings again. "Don't hang up we think someone used your credit card!" she says really fast. I said, oh yeah, I reported those charges to the bank yesterday.
Then she sounds sullen. "Well... I guess we'll be getting the chargebacks then..."
I said, "yeah, I guess so!"
Don't know if the guy was using a program to help him cheat, but he played really badly.
Casinos are out to make a buck, with little regard for the welfare of future of the players. They don't care if an addict comes in with all of his life savings, and blows it all in one sitting.
Actually, yes, they do...greatly. Casinos are based on gaming as entertainment and repeat business. They want to people to get hooked and then go to the casino once a month or once a year and keep spending money in their casino. Problem gamblers are regularly blacklisted since they drive away paying customers.
Sure, but problematic for whom? The casinos are notorious for putting a winning blackjack player on a blacklist, and not letting them in. Why? Did they cheat? No, they just won, and casinos hate to lose money
Casinos generate the majority of their profit from their interest on their cash reserves, not from actual gaming. The take on gambling alone would barely covering operating the average casino. They generate their revenue on the interest of their cash, an adequate reserve of which must be maintained to pay out all outstanding bets at anytime. The more bet, the more reserve, the more interest. The take from gaming is actually secondary now.
Blacklisting is reserved for cheaters and addicts, not winners. Casinos want winners to keep playing and turn their money over in the casino, game the system and bad things happen.
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.
-- No sig for you!
There is no way for any user to know if an on-line "casino" is shaving points or that any of the other "players" are working for the casino. Unless you are betting on something that can be verified publicly and can't be rigged easily (such as major league sports) on-line gambling is too much of a gamble.
If you read the TOS for any of these online poker sites (ie, partypoker.com) they make it very clear that their software scans your machine for software that may aid you in playing the game. This includes anything that determines odds, anything that plays hands for you, etc... And They have the ability to update there list of known software as new pieces are releases.
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?
From the article: argue the complexities of the game and the changing strategies ensure that creation of a program that can "read" opponents' cards using screen scanning techniques and respond in real time is years away at best.
well considering that my friend and i implemented a system that does just that (over a year ago), i call bullshit on this one. what we did was capture an example of each card off the screen (we use ParadisePoker). then we came up with a best-match algorithm that compares each card to our reference cards to decide which card it is.
it's the "react in real-time" part that is the bitch of it all... the "read" from the screen is, while i won't say trivial, doable. it took me and my friend less than a week to implement using java's "robot" class (to read pixel values from the screen).
some guys we know were just trying to put together something that calulated odds for 7-stud on the fly, but found that inputting the cards by hand took too long. so they asked us if we could capture the cards from the screen. we didnt know if we could or couldnt, but we looked into it and it wasnt so hard.
i also know of more than one person back at school (MIT) who is working on a fully-functioning bot. i dont think they are "years" off from being finished either.
Some of my buddies at MIT and I have been operating a program like this for over a year now. We wrote the control algorithms ourselves based on our preferred play styles and fit them into a screen scanning program. The program is no better than any of us, but it has the advantage of being cold and methodical. We included code for an emergency stop so that if something went wrong we wouldn't lose all of our money, though it hasn't been an issue after the initial testing phase. I'm still uncomfortable about using the program for higher stakes games, but on a 50 cent/1 dollar Hold 'Em table at peak hours (discovered through trial and error) the program consistently makes about $20 an hour.
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
Really, this won't make a difference. All this thing does is play by the odds. While that works well against unexperienced players, most people who play a lot of poker know how to figure the odds as well (it's not hard) and what makes the game interesting is how loose or tight they play to those odds. So if you're lucky enough to get at a table of suckers in an online casino this would be useful, but really, most online casinos, unlike real casinos, are populated by gambling addicts (most of whom know the odds, if not by numbers than by instinct) or increasingly by people who read articles about calculating the odds and think that they're going to make a killing against all the other suckers.
Really, if you want to make some money at poker you'd be better off learning to do the odds in your head and going to a real casino to find a table of marks. Or, alternatively, fleece your friends (or your friends' friends) during friendly games of poker, if you don't have any moral objections to that.
As to Blackjack, card counting will only work if the gambling site server emulates a pack or number of packs in a shoe that are not shuffled for many games. I haven't looked into that because card counting is such an open secret, the sites would be stupid to leave the loophole open. And they are not stupid.
There certainly are bots out there. That's a fact. But it's an altogether more complex thing to produce one than it seems at first sight.
. <-- the joke
o <-- your head
There is poker software that will bluff. And it's pretty damn good.
"Really, if you want to make some money at poker you'd be better off learning to do the odds in your head and going to a real casino to find a table of marks."
ha,ha,ha thats pretty funny..and niave.
When you go to a casino, 4 out 5 people at a table are regulars, and the pretty much just sand bag until mister, 'I know the odds' shows up, then the fleece him.
However, one time I did make a semi-pro player come over the table at me... ahhh that was great.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've always preferred making sure I have friendly players around the virtual table and sharing card information. Much, much easier to perform informed betting at that point. :) Plus, with that many cards on show you usually have a pretty good idea what the non-friendly players could have.
Not nice, but thankfully it's about as immoral as I get.
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
Seriously.
Foor the cool factor (Yay! its GNU!) consider "GNU Backgammon", the program uses 3 neural nets and humongous move databases. Backgammon compares well to poker btw, BG is ruled by dice and skill, Poker is ruled by chances and skill too. It is quite likely the strongest BG playing, ehm, thing, in the world.
Gnu BG plays an astounding 2200 rating on Fibs, if not higher if you get high end hardware, and give the bot a few secs between moves.
1800 is considered a worldclass human player, 1900 and above are grandmasters.
Friends, dont play backgammon online for money, and certainly not Poker. Instead if you must, visit tournies in the flesh.
Or get the bots, and a few spare comps... You will NEVER rob the casino thou, you will rob other suck^D^D^D^Dplayers.
"/Dread"
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.
Boy are you off.. online casino sites tend to have no clue when it comes to security. Most of the time they think throwing a firewall and using encryption is enough. A former co worker of mine once found a site whoes games linked directly to the SQL server.. they had the password embedded inside the executable! Now granted the current drive towards multi player games seems to be weeding out the usless monkeys as web oriented companies try and fail to write their games using .net (or whatever the latest cure all technology is these days).
But a if a lot of the software I'm seeing so far is any indication I'm not holding out much hope. Odds are there will be good money in messing with smaller software vendors systems.
(I may have this story slightly wrong)
Charles Babbage, the man who is generally credited with having invented the general-purpose computer, upon finding that he was unable to find people interested in actually financially contributing to research into the construction of such a computer, wound up instead devoting the end of his life to developing a less-general-purpose computing machine specifically designed to pick winning horses in horseraces. The machine never worked and was a financial disaster for babbage.
150 years later, computer scientists finally get their revenge on the gambling industry.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
They actually use standalone .exe apps you have to install, and the thing in the article saying that a program is years away from identifying cards onscreen or whatever is ludicrous, because sites don't change how they display the cards.. If you wrote an app to watch a 7-card stud game on a certain site, you could easily just tell your program "this 32 X 48 pattern of pixels is the ace of spades, this one is the 7 of diamonds" and it could easily tell what every other player had by just looking for those patterns. Making a program that can tell this on EVERY site would be hard, but why bother, just make it for one or two of the most popular sites and you're fine.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Poker is very different from Blackjack.
In poker you play against other player ; in blackjack you play against the house.
Blackjack used to be a game of chance with odds that could be slightly turned against the house in favour of the player if he played "perfectly". For this he needed to calculate odds given the number of cards left in the dealer's shoe and bet accordingly. If the game was played this way online, it would be a disaster for casinos as bots would rule the game. Online however, the deck is shuffled after each hand and there is no way of calculating the odds. Therefore, online blackjack has become a pure game of luck which is why bots are useless and why you shouldn't play blackjack.
On the other hand, bots can help you calculate odds in online poker. But that's only part of the game and they are largely ineffective against any decent players as they cannot understand human psychology as well as they can calculate odds.
Unlike chess - where bots are very effective - poker is not an information complete game. Therefore a player's skill depends strongly on his ability to "read" and bluff other players. Which is why poker bots will probably remain useless for a very long time. Probably until we reach hard AI.
The place where a bot could help in knowing if someone might be bluffing is that it could be used to instantly go over every hand you have played at the table. That data could be used to show your general tendencies while playing at the table, then give some sort of estimation of whether or not you're bluffing.
Knowing how many hands you went the distance on, your winning percentage, and your betting habits during each betting round are the things that a really good player knows about every other player at the table. Those are the things you see people thinking about while deciding to make a call on a bluff/non-bluff. Those are also the exact things a program could help track.
First of all, the house doesn't care in poker, because they get a share of the pot and aren't in an adversarial role. The only reason they might care is if this type of thing scares off real players and reduces the overall take in the course of an evening's play.
Secondly, depending on the casino, you can ask the dealer what the odds are, what the house's play would be, or you can even ask the dealer to play your entire hand as the house would. This varies from game to game and casino to casino.
Lastly, the house allows you to have certain materials available when playing. In Vegas, there are "player cards" or cheat sheets for black jack and other games that are about the size of an actual card, but show the plays that you should make based on certain stats (what you have, what the dealer/other players have, etc). Last I went to Vegas the only rule was that you had to set it down on the table before play began. As long as you weren't sitting next to some idiot that messed up the card distribution then it usually panned out. I believe there are some casinos that don't allow them, but most do, although you can't use them at the high minimum bet (>$50 or so) tables.
Basically I don't see the problem as long as this "bot" is really just a tool and the player is still interacting with the game, i.e., not automated play. I see it as a way to even the odds a bit and help the noobs not make so many stupid mistakes. Can't you remember a time when you just glanced at your cards and thought you had a certain hand and as you tossed them down in triumph you realized you misread the hand?... I can. Preventing those kinds of mistakes would save everyone some grief. Although I suppose poker wouldn't be the game it is if everyone didn't have a great story about a few hands.
The large poker rooms use custom c and c++ based clients.
This is the case for all of the top 10 online poker rooms: PartyPoker, PokerStars, Paradise, UltimateBet, PrimaPoker, PokerRoom, PacificPoker, CryptoLogic, Ladbrokes, Apex Poker Network.
They take security and integrity very serious and writing the clients from the bottom up assures them of that.
Black jack is a game that can be beaten in the long run. That's precisely why casinos will blacklist good players... because the good players know how to consistently win. You can call it "card counting" but there is nothing illegal about it, and an average player can "card count" without much learning. Just keep track of how many high cards are floating around, and statistically when there are many high cards to be dealt, you are more likely to see the dealer bust... plain and simple. You don't play to win with your hand by hitting, you increase your bet when the dealer is more likely to bust and let them take the high cards.
Saying saying that blackjack "played at [sic] it's best... will translate into certain losses" is incorrect.
What's the point of saying you have a relatively "informed" view, when your view is wrong?
Most people play like bots? No, that's the problem, "most people" can't calculate perfect statistics on the fly, or do any of the other things bots can do in microseconds.
The 'human element' you talk about is present in face-to-face games, but in online games, you can't even see the other players! That's why bots can compete and disrupt the game. Maybe you can comment about playing poker in home/casino games, but I think your relatively informed view does not apply to this thread.
I suggest modding parent down.
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.
That's interesting. In theory poker is a zero-sum game. Less than that, since the house takes a cut. You're taking money only from other people, and minus the house's cut the game is even. Perfect bots playing each other is a wash.
So the whole point is to get slightly higher odds than somebody else. Even a tiny advantage is the difference between winning and losing money, if that's your game. Many people play just for fun, and their losses are effectively payment for that. You see that all the time at 21, where simple card counting strategies can win you small sums of money but most people don't wish to expend the effort for that; they're playing just for fun.
Personally I kinda like the idea of bots playing each other. It's nerds playing each other at a totally different game. Humans still have heuristics that out-play the best chess programs, but only barely (a handful of people will just barely beat the top software, at best. The rest of us get creamed.)
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.
In Poker, the house has no interest in the outcome (presuming the game is not crooked - that the dealer and a shill are not in cohoots). The house gets their money by raking the pot (taking a percentage) or charging a time payment from one of the players (each hand the person paying rotates). That's why Poker is about the only form of gambling where you as a player have a fair shot (notwithstanding the story of the MIT Blackjack team).
I can't imagine trusting online Poker play. Even if the site/house is honest, players can share information secretly or use aids to calculate pot odds perfectly. They can do that in offline games as well, but it is much more difficult to get away with it.
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.
Consider the following case in Hold 'em:
You are up against only one other player and are in last position. The river has come out and there is a queen (from the flop), a jack, and then 3 low garbage cards. You have Ace-Jack. If that player checks to you, and has checked the previous bets, you will probably bet that even though you only have second pair. If he bets high, and has been betting the whole time, you may want to REALLY think before calling, and especially before raising.
This is an example of how BETS come into consideration.
And of course a good bot, like a good player, would not be able to just take all bets at face value.
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 did look into this a while back because I (like a lot of other folks) thought I could build a card-counting blackjack bot. So the online prevent this by shuffling after every hand, and use a multideck shoe so that there is never enough info on the table (even with other players there) to give you a good count in the middle of the one hand you get before they reshuffle. Crafty. They have made sure the only games where skill will give you the advantage are games like poker where the house gets paid no matter what.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
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.
Yeah, the same way Internet porn has undermined the stripper industry.
--
make install -not war
Online gambling of anyform is currently illegal in most ( if not all ) states, and most developed countries. ( no islands dont count as developed countries no matter how much money they have)
Online gambling is legal here in the UK, a member of the G8, and the fourth largest economy in the world. Shame about your island test though...
There are a huge number of misconceptions about many aspects of this issue clearly apparent in this discussion. I'm going to go through some of the highest-moderated misunderstandings in hopes of reclaiming some of what this whole discussion is about.
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.
You do not actually need to break into the program in order to use some form of bot. Graphics recognition has advanced to the point where a hand can be analyzed on the fly by a concurrently running program. See Poker Office. Such programs can then immediately provide feedback based on the information they glean.
Could this proliferation of poker-playing bots undermine the almost $1 billion online gambling industry?
The end of the industry is not likely at hand. Poker is just one part of this industry, and the industry will continue EVEN IF bots are the only ones playing. The casino will just take the same percentage of each pot.
if a pokerbot can clean out the 9 other people at the table
Quite frankly it is ridiculous to think that a bot with perfect play can clean out any table. Good poker play results in a slow accumulation of profit at a faster rate than losses. A perfect bot will certainly not be playing more than 1 in 5 hands to begin with, and not win more than one in 3 of those. Good players can't just make the right cards appear, no matter what you saw in Maverick. They get the same crappy cards as everyone else, it's how they play them that differs.
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?
Yes, very much so. Contrary to popular opinion, most people are not complete retards. It's not difficult to tell when someone is consistently winning - certainly there are hot streaks, but any whiff of foul play will result in a huge exodus of players from any poker site. They have no reason to do such a thing, as profits are huge from both the rake AND the interest they are collecting on your bankrolled money.
_______
Any current bot is very likely for Limit poker - this is the 'easiest' style to play purely by the numbers. The state space required for a bot to make decisions in No Limit poker is absolutely huge- one poorly written part can get your bot cleaned out regularly.
Personally I would LOVE to be at a table where I have positively ID'ed a player as a bot because I could then run circles around it. There are a number of tactics that would play merry hell with a bot that plays the straight numbers, and even a bot that adjusts to my own play style is not difficult to take advantage of.
I play regularly online and I do not fear the bot. What I fear most is the bad player that will put all their money on a 20% draw, where any good player (or bot) would fold- because sometimes they hit, and that hurts.
Once they find a cure for bad players though, that's the end of poker, but I am content that that time is far in the future.
As a temporary solution couldn't the online poker rooms implement a system that asks the user to input say a 5 digit character code every 10, 20 hands or whatever. That way the bot won't be able to enter the code and is subequently forced to fold/check all hands until it can. This ensures the player is human. Of course it does ensure the human is not cheating in some other way but it is a start.
Rake Free + Mac Poker: CardCrusade
Bots don't do a thing to help you win. Big deal, it tells you the odds that you have. Any smart poker player knows his odds and he also knows that most of the time it's all luck. People who think that there is a lot of skill in poker are kidding themselves. Besides the betting aspect of it and knowing when to holdem or foldem (Kenny Rogers tune playing), what comes out is purly the luck of the draw.
The only true way to cheat is what my brother and his friends do. They enter into the same tournament or play at the same table and then call each other on the phone or use a chat program. Then they tell each other what they have. They have a great system of not getting caught because the have serveral accounts and change the rooms they play in and what not. They have been doing this for months and win enough to cover their expenses. That is the biggest problem, some people get too greeding doing this and try to win millions and get caught.
But then again, what are the consequenses of getting caught..... nothing. This isn't Vegas where they can throw you in jail. They have no proof that you are really doing anything wrong, just logs telling them how you played and what good is that. All you have to tell them is that that is how you play. They can't call you a liar because they don't know you.
I think that people make this a bigger deal then what it is.
I don't see how poker bots present any kind of a unique problem.
Online casino's exist in order to rake money off the table. They don't care if this comes from bots or humans. Lets assume that the bots get so good that every single human gets replaced by a poker bot.
What does it really matter? The online casino's will still generate money, only they'll be funded by bad bot writer's rather than bad poker players.
Think of it as a more intellectual version of battlebots...
For Paradise Poker, the image reading would be easy. If you look in the Paradise Poker install directory, you'll find all the bitmaps the program uses to draw the graphics. Simply compare what's on the screen against the saved bitmaps until you hit a match. Identifying the edges of the cards would be the hardest task, imo, and that would also be pretty simple as the cards always appear at the same locations.
Some random links on the subject:
and a random company link (haven't read this one):
Why settle for the poker table, when the markets are much bigger? Playing the markets is probably more difficult, but you're the best coder around, aren't you? ;-)
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
(Side note: If anyone is interested in playing some online poker and wants a bonus on their first deposit, drop a reply to this with your name and email address, and I'll send a referral out. We both get a bonus from this.)
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."
Won't matter.
The other players can still collude against you, even if the casino doesn't.
And the online casinos can't really stop them.
Nah, you should haved used names like twisted.jpg and grind.jpg.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
It's not like the bots have see-through card hacks. The bots cannot cheat (at least I hope they are not dumb enough to have clients that know about all the layers cards!).
As far sa I'm concernd a spread of bots would be just like a spread of really good players - and even if they became the majority, why should it matter if online poker playing turns into a contest for besk poke developer? In fact if there was a widespread bot released I can think of no greater fun than developing the counter-bot to trigger bugs in the software and make all the clueless bot users fork over money to me!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Imagine a painting of a BeoWolf cluster of Poker Bots playing cards....
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.
If they really want to stop bots then they could just have each player solve a captcha every once in a while. Somewhat annoying, but you could always have non-captcha rooms and captcha rooms so you could decide how much annoyance you would trade away for the security of knowing you're not playing against bots.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
Here is an excerpt of my e-mail exchange with Mike Brunker (the author of the MSNBC article) prior to our phone interview. It might provide some interesting information on the topic.
- Darse.
[begin excerpt]
(1) It is not easy to write a good poker-playing program.
It took us (the Computer Poker Research Group at the U of A, http://games.cs.ualberta.ca/poker/) a few years to develop a program that could win consistently in higher-level games against opponents who took the game seriously. It has been successful against human players of average skill for many years now, but it is the only known program that can make that claim.
We operate a free poker server where people can play against our bots. Hobbyist programmers can also have their programs connect to the server and play in those games, and more than a hundred programs have participated over the past few years. None of them has come close to being a winning player, so it is clearly not a trivial task.
(2) Is it *possible* to write a very strong poker program?
Absolutely.
Poker is a challenging and rewarding field for research in Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are many aspects of the game that make it more difficult and more interesting than games like chess and checkers.
It isn't simply a matter of computing probabilities and other numbers. A good program has to *think* about the game in the right way. Master-level poker requires an understanding of how each opponent plays the game -- you must observe and adapt as you play, and that turns out to be a rather difficult learning problem.
Nevertheless, these problems will be solved eventually, and the technology will become available for others to use. It took more than 20 years for chess programs to finally become a serious threat to the best players. It won't take that long before we see elite poker-playing programs, but it still might be a number of years before they participate in online games.
Of course, a practical program doesn't have to be as good as the best players -- it only needs to beat a game with average players in order to win money.
(3) Are bots playing in online games now?
I expect there are a few now, yes. Perhaps more than a few. But are they a threat? Probably not. Many of them will be losing players, at least for a while. Their authors will either lose interest, or have to invest a lot of time and effort to improve their programs.
If someone does succeed in writing a program that can grind out a small win, what difference should it make? It will be like any other solid player -- playing a conservative style (only good cards and good situations), and slowly extracting a tax from the weak players.
Look at it this way. Most people who play online poker lose money. That's an unavoidable mathematical fact. Considering the house cut (the rake), perhaps 30% of players can stay in the black, maybe less. Many of the losing players will lose slowly, so the cost is a fair trade-off for the entertainment value they receive. Some will lose much more rapidly, and they really shouldn't be playing at all (unless they happen to be independently wealthy).
Of the players on the winning side, most will only eek out a small win rate. A winning poker bot would just be another solid player at the table. Probably less than 10% of all players have enough knowledge and skill to win a significant amount of money, and I doubt there will be any poker programs in that category for quite some time.
Will the existence of good bots radically change online poker? I doubt it. Look at casinos (real and online) that offer the traditional gambling games like craps and roulette. Those games cannot be beaten -- there is no skill that can be applied to avoid losing in the long run. But that fact doesn't seem to harm the popularity of their business.
Instead of fearing bots, people should use them to help learn more about the game. Our research program is com
char*p="char*p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}"
a network of several bots playing *at the same table*
What I don't get is this: why are groups of 5-6 people not getting together, playing at medium to high stakes tables, and just dominating the games since there's nothing stopping them from discussing what cards they have over some IRC channel or a VOIP conference call or something
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
I think it would be pretty easy to detect that two players always play at the same table together and never play against one another, or re-raise one another to force out other players when one has a weak hand. Any collusion behavior that actually gives you an edge is going to be pretty easy to detect statistically.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
First I think it's fascinating, the whole notion of trying to create an effective bot. I generally agree with most of the comments here. Bots wouldn't put an end to the industry; for every angle they may be able to exploit, there's at least one angle to exploit and/or discover them.
I've been playing a bit of online poker and there are times when I felt I was at a table of "non-humans" the way they played so mechanically and didn't talk.
However, if I were the developer of a poker system, one of the first things I'd do would be to regularly inventory the list of running processes on the machine - this would be one way of eventually identifying bots. To thwart this, you'd need a much more elaborate multi-machine system.
I think it's a lot easier to design systems to thwart bots than it is to create an effective one.
As I see it, the entire online gambling industry, even at its most reputable level, is still extremely dubious and unstable. You never know if you hit the big jackpot, whether or not the company will pay you or come up with some excuse to not do so, and since online gambling is a questionably legal activity in the first place, I think anyone who takes it too seriously is foolish. Then again, fools have always been drawn by the appeal of easy money.
I believe most tech people really aren't that interested in gambling. Once you know the odds, if you're smart, you know better than to gamble. OTOH, there is definitely an appeal to creating a bot/design that can manipulate the system.
I did not prove what you were saying. You said it was a bad idea to chase a draw or flush. I said there are circumstances in which it is a very good idea. There are also bad cases such as the one you pointed out.
Anyway, you completely ignored the first part of my post. To repeat: you cannot play strictly by the odds and win at poker. You need to consider other player's betting patterns and behavior in order to win at poker.
If I know you always fold when the pot odds are against you I will clean you out. I know you only call/raise strong hands so I won't try to bluff with my weak hand. When you check on the flop that is an instant tell that your "good" start failed to improve.
If you still disagree please explain how you will win money by strictly playing the odds.
Is this question a troll or what? 2 problems with this means of authentication: 1) Its annoying to be chatty at an online game, and it slows down the playing of the hands. (I've seen people swearing quite a bit on Pacific Poker because people are taking too long to make their decisions) 2) What will be your criteria? This sounds like the poker equivalent of a literacy test. It would be hard to come up with an unbiased way to do it, and it could be easily defeated.