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Pokerbots Making Online Players Sad
Anonymous Coward wrote to mention a Wired article about the rise of Pokerbots in online gaming venues. From the article: "Smart, skilled players are rewarded in the long run, especially online, where there are plenty of beginners who would never have the nerve to sit down at a real table. But WinHoldEm isn't just smart, it's a machine. Set it to run on autopilot and it wins real money while you sleep. Flick on Team mode and you can collude with other humans running WinHoldEm at the table. For years, there has been chatter among online players about the coming poker bot infestation. WinHoldEm is turning those rumors into reality, and that is a serious problem for the online gambling business."
That would certainly explain a lot, especially if Taco wrote it.
My initial thought is that anyone who would run a pokerbot is evil. Then my attention turns to Las Vegas and the enormous rooms of metalic robots who are all fixed to win and win big, suck the life, time (24/7 baby), and money, out of would-be regular people. Then I don't feel as bad. I still don't like cheaters, tho. The answer? Play free online poker. Save your money for BYOB -- real games with your friends. We play Texas Holdem from time to time at the cottage and it's a hoot. Games should be fun -- not business, IMHO.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Well, I'm sorry but I don't lose any sleep over people who lose money gambling, or who feel it is unfair. It's gambling! Who do you think pays for all those lights in Vegas? The losers!
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
all you have to do is find a flaw in the poker bot and then exploit it, they always have one!
Sometimes, to a shallow ditch in the desert.
Hard to implement online, actually. Nevermind. :)
You are not the customer.
Mod me flamebait - I don't really give a damn.
However, I don't have any more sympathy for some schmuck that gets reamed gambling online than I do for the same douchebag that gets reamed in vegas. If you're going to play cards or pull a slot lever, you should just assume your money is being poured in gas and set aflame and not expect to see a return.
And if you're playing *online* . . . Well, we all know the stereotype. Except you're also stupid because at least in person you can see the fucking cards and the fucking dealer and be reasonably certain less fishiness is going on.
We knew it would happen sooner or later. I do not see it as a big deal though. I find the live play with my friends or in a local poker room much more satysfying anyway.
No more unassisted human players, but networks of bots competing against each other, ultimately controlled by individuals, and creating a larger and more interesting game... Bots are just another tool, after all.
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If they're allowed to play, there's no problem. Humans should deal (heh), or retreat to humans-only venues.
If they're not allowed to play (why not?), but still do, there are two problems. The social one of people running them (I'm assuming the bots don't decide to play by themselves) which probably can't be solved - some people are inherently dishonest. Then there's the technical problem - how do you let humans play while shutting out bots? There really isn't a feasible solution, especially if humans decide to play physically but let a bot decide their moves for them. But of course some will still try to implement a partial solution. Discuss.
I can tell you that the bots are not a big deal yet. First of all, I'll be amazed when they ever come up with the technology to play no limit hold 'em. That would be a miracle program. Poker is much more than just betting and raising, and the occasional bluff. Just as important are reading your opponent, making bets that damage others pot odds, and playing your position in relation to the blinds. Plus, there's just a certain amount of feel needed in the game. Even Doyle Brunson claims ESP is important in Super System.
Limit ring games are a different ballgame, and a bot does have some chance of success. However, that chance is at best only at the low level games, where a program could actually outplay the players. Any mid to high stakes game has players who will quickly figure out the way a bot plays, and milk it for all it's worth.
As it is now, winholdem is a pretty bad program. I don't know of anyone who has made a profit with it, and I do know a couple of people who have at least taken a look at it. If you're worried about something in online poker, be much more worried about collusion, with multiple people at the same table sharing their hands with each other. But, even that doesn't give a huge advantage against a good player, unless there are upwards of six or seven people in a room sharing information against the rest. Poker is, and always will be a skill game, and none of these cheating methods can change that.
hed.
I'd think that the same sort of approach could be taken as has been done in the past with macro's in mmorpg's. Track behaviour, and if there is suspicion, have an admin personal message the player, asking them a question a bot wouldn't have difficulty answering. Also,
I know a few people who play high stakes online games(2k+ buyin tables), are people trusting the bots at high stakes?
Boxing Equipment Reviews
limit holdem sucks anyway. Play no limit like a real man and you don't gotta worry about silly bots. People aren't smart enough to make good no limit bots yet :)
I am not aftraid of poker bots. I play in a casino 20 hours/week and online 15 hours a week.
2 /SID=e/TID=F588_121/l=WS1/R=1/IPC=us/SHE=0/H=3/;_y lt=AuwgGElWrfwm0QKAD7BMCEdXNyoA/SIG=12dj0jprq/EXP= 1125273382/*-http%3A//www.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan /Grad/papp/node22.html) provide disproportionate benefit to folks that explot low probability/high payoff situations.
A good player adjusts to his players in a very human way.
Artificial intelligence of a high variety would be need to emulate this adaptive behaviour in a robot/software program.
There are two benefits that I see from poker bots:
1. They will provide self-funded development in artificial intelligence, just like the stock market provided advancement in certain aspects of physics, statistics, and probability.
2. Good poker players will detect bots and 'trap' them to make money from them.
Implied odds (http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=implied+odds/v=
The poker bots do provide more information to pople, and they give them an edge, in that respect they are simply a tool.
The poker bots provide a better mathematical approach to poker, which means statistically, they will beat bad players.
Regardless of how it happens, a fool and his money are soon parted.
Of course, won't be long until really good poker players start cheating by pretending to be bots...
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Do you really believe that the operators of these on-line "casinos" are above playing poker against you while they can watch your hands, or when they can tell the computer what to deal next? And while dealing themselves the good cards too often might be caught by statistical analysis of the decks (if you can afford to loose enough to gather maeningful data), their watching and knowing your hands would only look like skillful play on their part.
Another form of cheating that I know is going on (because I know someone who admits to doing it) is to play multiple hands in the same game against another player and share information about your hands. This is a great way to part the fools from their money, since having lots more information about the deck than non-cheating players geatly improves your odds. You know, for example, if the chance of drawing that fourth king is very high because it hasn't been dealt to the other hands you know about, or zero because it has. And when one of the positions you control has a particularly good hand you can drive up the pot by having the other hands you control place small raises when they would otherwise drop.
If you like on-line poker, let me introduce you to three card monty. Some people confuse it with a game of chance too, but it's just a very expensive private magic show.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Most online poker sites have a CHAT going.
Just ask them a question. Could be an idea for the poker software programmers.
Just send me the $$$ and you don't have to pay any copyright fees.
I keep seeing comments talking about "those durned cheat'n bots". But it makes me wonder, what exactly is "cheating" in this case?
In most cases, I'd say that "cheating" is doing anything that is against the rules of the game that gives you an unfair advantage. But what here is the bot doing?
As far as I can tell, none of the things this bot does are things that acutal human players couldn't do, if they wanted to bother. So then at that point is it still cheating?
The one exception to this is the collusion. That's clearly against the rules of poker. But I predict that that will be a self-correcting problem. Since after all, it won't be long before someone makes an alternate version of the BOT that feeds incorrect data to the other BOTs so that you're more likely to win money from them. (Since game-theory wise, if you're the only cheater in a room full of honest people, you have an advantage.) And shortly after that, other bots will start to do the same, until the "collusion" a bot gets cannot be trusted, and is no longer a worthwhile channel of information.
(Heck, a whole war of bots trying to "Read" other bots based on their (possibly erronious) collusion information could start. That could actually be kind of fun to watch. From a distance.)
Anyway, as long as the BOTs aren't actually hacking the system, or forcing other peoples' clients to crash, etc, then I think you could make a good argument that it's not really cheating.
(And no, I'm not a bot user or apologist. All of my online poker playing is restricted to free sites, anyway...)
I'm no gambler myself, but I do understand that part of what actually makes gambling "fun" for people is the risk and potential reward. For many people it is a mixed professional and entertainment pursuit.
Granted, I'm not very good, and so I just have NEVER found enjoyment from pitting my wits against people in this way. It always just seems like luck whether I get a good hand or not. But for people WITH this skill, it's very enjoyable and exciting. As I understand it, the strategy of some poker variants like T#xas H#ld Em is pretty deep.
But as models of real money get pushed to the online universe (MMORPG's, pagerank, etc.) people are going to try and use them as automated moneymaking avenues. It just goes hand in hand with putting ANY kind of real value online. If people can find an algorythm to exploit the particular system, then they're going to.
REALLY good humans have advantages over bots in poker (and perhaps still in chess as well), but it's the above average casual players who are going to get raked.
So it's just time for the online gambling industry to mature a little, just like the MMORPG market, blogging, or any online universe that's had to combat bots and keep them from raping all the possible value from those systems.
Either they can find viable ways to combat bots and make play work for human players, or they will not be able to remain competitive.
Slices, dices, eats your lunch.
Interestingly enough, a similar debate rages on Blizzard's online games. In both World of Warcraft and Diablo II, people have written java hooks into the game to allow for scripted boss runs.
The advantage is obvious, anyone with a bot doesn't actually have to look for good stuff (MF) himself and can spend his time online fighting other players or trading away his newly found items. In both cases, however, Blizzard has aggresively tried to keep these bots off their networks and often bans accounts associated with the bots.
In this case, I see the bots as a failure on Blizzard's part to keep the game interesting, and item drops common. However, I don't know anyone who plays online poker to have fun. I think that it's fine on computer games, but to run a bot against real people with real money is really lazy, and against the spirit of the game.
At least the war on the environment is going well
I wrote a bot as an experiment years back. It was for other online games at MSNs Ca$h site. It worked perfectly, but unlike the author of the poker-bot I found it unethical to continue. It was just a proof-of-concept for myself and I only cashed $100 and then stopped completely. But while playing I noticed that others have also written bots and are exploiting them full time, there were nicks like 'john005' and 'john006' etc. competing with my program at a pace that no human can keep up. These online playing bots are nothing new. But as always people who bet should expect their money to be gone and never count on winning. I guess that counts even more for online betting.
I mean, for REAL money. Why? Is this a way of keeping the gullible poor and out of the higher echelons of society? I don't personally give a toss - games are for enjoyment, not a way to become rich. Play poker - fine. Play poker and lose your house? Fuckin' retard.
Maybe the online venues can also run the bot on each player on a game. If a player exhibits a correlation of their moves compared to what the bot predicted, then make them prove who they are, otherwise end their game.
In the end I just don't get the whole gambling thing. I get alcoholism. I get drug addiction. Hell, I understand why people commit many types of crime. But compulsive addictive gambling? It's those guys you see day in, day out after work on the fruit machines - dammit, save that money, the machines are designed to make money overall FROM you.
Then I think. Sod it, I'm not doing it, I'm not losing their money. It is their problem and I haven't got the time to care about them. So I don't.
I saw fucking computer generated horse racing on TV the other day, with text/phone/internet betting. What The Fuck... There was a whole channel devoted to this for some reason, but hey, if people are going to spend their money, or if they get their kicks from risking their money on random events, then fine. So be it.
This can only be solved in one way. Impliment a networked FPS engine for knocking over the server and pulling out virtual Derringers when cheating is suspected.
> Who do you think pays for all those lights in Vegas? The losers!
I just send my money straight to the power company, once a month.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you play against newer Fritz models at maximum difficulty, you will never again say that humans can keep up with computers in chess.
While I believe the actions of cheaters are reprehensible, you'd have to be very naive to think that there wouldn't be someone trying to cheat. Cheaters have always existed and the internet only makes it easier for them because instead of needing slight of hand to get an ace up their sleeve, they only need to find a bot on a warez site.
So, what can you do about it? Don't play. Send a complaint to the online gaming company and tell them that you're not going to use their service again. Play with your friends in a home game or in a local tournament and avoid the internet completely. If you're playing poker only because of the money, I believe you're missing the best part of the game.
When I was in school, I loved the old corewars game, and was facinated by the C-Robots game. Both of these games involve coding artifical intelligence agents and pitting them against each other. Now it seems the opportunity is there to do the same thing with online poker games!
Why gripe about this WinPokerBot thing? Code your own that's smarter and reap the rewards! Sure, it will annoy the human players, but they'll just have to move to a secure server that verifies you in some way (via a custom client perhaps).
I don't know what happens in collusion mode, but my guess is that the different bots are sharing their hidden cards. What else could it be?
Make your bot so that it lies to the other bots that it is colluding with. You get extra card info and the other bots get worse card info.
That's what they said about chess, and guess what their are computer that beat chess players hands down.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This sounds like... the work of SADBOT :(
It doesn't make me rich. I win some and I lose some. All in all, I have a small loss. But you know what? I don't care. I play so that I can get better. It's great to see that you do get better. Then I use those skills on the real tables.
that bots had kneecaps to break.
There is a cool story in Keven Mitnick's book, The Art of Intrusion that goes over a guy who did this and won some money off it.
Gosh! They are going too far. What's the point of making bots in online poker?! I doubt they don't have enough players.
Waik, http://waik.sourceforge.net
Play the tournaments! It's much harder to win big, since you can't simply wait for new players with fresh money to take. That's why the bots don't play them. It's also much more fun.
It is amazing how much money I have earned. When I start feeling bad for the other players I just hop in my Lotus and the day brightens right up!
I, for one, welcome our poker playing... oh nevermind.
> There isn't a whole lot a poker bot can do for you that most skilled
> players can't do in their head anyways. The ONLY advantage to a bot is
> the automation. Being able to consult one while you're playing isn't
> an edge against a good player.
I've never run a pokerbot, but I expect you could babysit 2 or 3 at once, all playing different games. (Maybe 6 or 10 different games?)
You could target lower money games, i.e. weaker players, and still make money.
Way to go... just tell the name of the bot that you can find by an easy search on google... that's gonna help online poker *sigh*
Learning how to properly construct an href is even more priceless...
Why not make the players at the table type in a word from one of those scrambled images to join each hand like yahoo and others use to deter bot signups. I haven't looked yet to see if those are defeatable w/ some tricky code but probably are =\
Easiest way to capture hacks like these, or map hack for Starcraft for that matter is print screens. Have the screens randomly happen, and send to the main buisness. Anyone caught cheating is banned. Its simple and will work.
God spoke to me.
We don't deal to droids in here!
Get your Unix fortune now!
if this 'winholdem' program really worked, why would this guy sell it? Why wouldn't he just quitely use a small army of bots to make a fortune and retire?
Just put in a challenge-response mechanism which stays one step ahead of the bots. When a bot is detected, skew the results against them, in favor of the humans. Eventually the bot accounts will go broke.
This basically ends up encouraging the bot accounts to go elsewhere, while retaining and attracting players who don't want to play against bots.
Ultimately, it ends up rewarding the Casino's which can stay on the technology edge, while forcing the other ones to be primarily attractive to bots. Those will undoubtedly end up going broke.
The only real problem that I see here is one of lazyness on the part of the Casino operators.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
"I fold"
"Fold? I can't let you do that Dave"
Get your Unix fortune now!
Except for the ingrained collusion, I don't see much problem with poker bots. I mean, who cares if they play statistics to the tee?
If anything that will only guarantee their losses when they hold a good hand vs the best hand. A common scenario in poker is when you have the 2nd best hand and someone is betting into you. You have to ask "what are the chances they have it?".
Oh, how I'd love to be at a table full of bots that would never think that I really do have the best hand.
The tournament games are where it's at. After a time, you get to know the regular players. New faces (avatars?) are easy to spot and collusion becomes very difficult because the players are sprinkled about the tables.
:-P If you see some success, do exactly what I have done here and lower your overall game cost. (Do it with some tact though.)
If you are a good player and have a bankroll large enough to handle the variance, you have a very good chance at winning some nice cash. I personally found this too expensive and risky to enjoy the whole experience.
I like the idea of asking questions and including turing tests, BTW. These two things, applied to the cash tables, would go a long way toward thwarting the bot problem. Collusion will remain an issue however.
The problem with the cash tables, and to a lesser degree on the sit 'n go games, is the ability for players (bot or human) to communicate outside the game environment. I'm not sure we are going to be able to solve that. --Stay away from the cash games, unless they are very high stakes. (Even then variance is several times your buyin cost --be ready and beware!)
The wife and I play regularly --it's a lot of fun when you've got some good players online. We started out playing cash games and sit and go contests. However, variance was just huge compared to real table action. Ended up losing a fair amount, despite solid play.
After doing some analysis and research, we decided to give it another go and stick to tournament play. --Much better experience. We've got our losses back and are now profit taking while slowly building the bankroll.
Coupla things I've noted:
- the cards often appear balanced for high action. Almost every hand sees flops that are difficult for players to let go of. It's our perception that bad beats on the river are far more common online than seen at the meatspace tables. (Undecided if this is just due to more hands being played however...)
- be aware of the overall game speed. Long rounds allow time to play cards that matter, short ones don't. Speed games are very profitable for the house, putting pressure on skilled players. Avoid those at higher buy in's.
- rebuy games often generate very good payouts in relation to the intial buy-in. avoid the temptation to rebuy however, unless it's very early in the game. Extra chips won't matter to a skilled player and you just pay a lot more in relation to your potential winnings. Rebuy speed games are pure evil at higher buy-ins, but can be fun and very profitable at lower ones. (Given you don't mind the greater chance factor.)
- the large sites are more difficult to manage than the smaller ones are. When considering online poker, pay close attention to the tournament games offered. This will tell you a lot about the site and what players they are looking for. Number of initial chips, buy ins offered and round length are key.
I'm posting this out of self-interest as well. (Like any solid poker would!) The more players in the game, the bigger the winnings are for everyone involved. Just thought that disclaimer was appropriate to make everything clear.
Want to play where my wife and I do and save yourself the trouble of learning what we have? Shoot me an e-mail and I'll trade our learning in return for a signup referral. (Referrals generate points and some small dollars, we use to play more tournament poker.) I'm not a sales shill by the way. Google me and you will find nothing of the kind. I simply enjoy the game and have been winning enough to continue playing to learn, earn and the occasional nice dinner with winnings
One important rule, passed on to me during our last trip to play at Binyons: Play as cheap as you can and as often as you can. Keeping play overhead low helps to manage player variance and thus overall profit.
Blogging because I can...
I play online poker (mildly seccessfully) and a poker bot would win at limit poker, no bot could win at No Limit. Especially if it judges by math only. In NL Poker the point is to throw your opponents odds off. Robot or Human, I'll still take their money! ^_^
Online poker is not poker, its online poker. Reading your opponents is not a part of online poker, you cannot see or hear your opponents. There is no feeling going on, online poker is 100% purely statistics.
This is why the entire online poker fad is so stupid. You have no idea who or what you are playing against, and have no way to tell if they are cheating, and you can't do anything about it even if they are.
And collusion is a big problem, if you think being good can magically make you able to beat people who have more information than you, then you are deluding yourself, plain and simple. The fundamentals of poker are all about trying to guess what cards your opponents may have, based on what cards you know they don't have. In online poker, this is in fact the entire "game". If you have two sixes showing, you could have a good hand. But if I know that bob has a six and joe has a six, then I don't have to guess if you have 3 or 4 of a kind, I know you don't. I can make a much better decision now based on that information.
$5 table and only $30 after letting it run all night? $.50/$1 tables of Texas Hold'em generally have a pot average between $5 and $10 and cost $.75 for small blind/big blind.
I'm more worried about collusion at a table and there's no way to stop this, whether they're using this bot, Teamspeak, or sitting next to each other.
The bot does do the hardest thing for a real person to do which is to sit and not play. Fold junk hands for an hour, and you're willing to bet on anything that's playable.
Play in computers, play with computers. And ( until proven wrong ) I agree to proffesional players ( and other proffesionals ), computers are good but not that good yet. In 80's ( boom on "AI" ) I used to write configuration programs based on "AI??". First, it took years to get most? knowledge to those systems and even then - a seasoned configuration specialist would do better work. The benefit was - the specialists are expensive, not needed in most cases, etc.. 9 out of 10 computer / network configuration is done by some (IMHO) MSEE or CTO or some other less knowledgeable person - and a end up very expensive disaster that someone has to fix later. Isn't it same here - there are no miracles, skills (still) win over any bot ( even in chess I think ). Some day maybe but not yet.
So, let me understand this- Some smart /rescorsfull people even the odds via a bot-somehow no one notices they are a script or simple AI the smart people make decent money----the problem is?
Robots will be the reason behind the apocalypse. I can see it now.
why is he selling it for $25 bucks.
Hang on, wait .. that's Pokémon ...
Players themselves also took steps against the bots, using a site's chat function to smoke out the software. Moneymaker likes to engage players in small talk between hands. "Poker bots can't make conversation," he says.
It's obvious that Chris Moneymaker probably never played Quake:
Dealer: SargeBot wins with a straight: AKQJT
PokerNut: wow
TexasChic: nh Sarge
doobie:nh
SargeBot: Stick a fork in ya... your done.
Coderz 4 Life
I agree completely.
"think of it as evolution in action"
I read the article and started to comment, but then I got a little carried away and it turned into a 2 page essay. I have posted it on my blog here: http://mediumbagel.org/?p=62.
i can't play anymore? :(
Bender.
Captcha on entry to the table? It wouldn't work for a person sitting at his/her computer(s) entering bots and letting them play, but it certainly would solve some of the "leave it on overnight" nonsense.
(a) Winholdem is terrible. I'd sit at a table full of win holdem bots (provided they're not sharing information) any day of the weak for any stakes I could statistically afford.
(b) It's a little frustrating to see the endless stream of people spouting off about how online poker sites are surely rigged when they know absolutely nothing about it. I've been playing online poker for a year and have turned $20 into a small fortune. I beat the game for more than I make as a developer on the good months now, and I've successfully withdrawn a little less than half my profits. Poker sites take a rake from each pot that's played. Some of the larger sites have 80k concurrent users at peak times. Start taking a little piece of every pot with that many people online and you're earning a small fortune every freaking minute. They have very little overhead, computers, bandwidth, support, the rest is pure profit, and there's plenty for them. Why the hell would they risk this by cheating their players? If it was impossible to beat online poker, how do many of us do so consistently?
Truth be told I suspect these comments are coming from people who've never played online, or are influenced by the same stereotypes of poker being a game for cheats and hustlers. Bad players who try online poker and can't seem to win tend to enjoy spouting off that the sites are rigged, when in reality weird things happen in poker everywhere. Knowing how to bankroll yourself for what limits to sustain the unavoidable statistical downswings is the key.
Don't worry about the foolishness spouted in this tread. Win holdem is no threat, nor are any other bots at this point in time. And any of the major poker sites are plenty reputable, I was wary at first too but I've seen their business practices for a solid 12 months now. Online poker is booming right now and there's plenty fun to be had and money for the taking if you're half intelligent and can learn the required discipline.
I like ice cream.
Even an intermediate player who can spot a bot can bust that bot. Bots aren't smart, they follow set logic based on hand strength, player betting patterns, and general statistics. If you play them "by the book" you will loose. If you play them by varying your play, playing overly aggressive and not playing crap hands, even in late position, you will always beat them. They are predicable.
Oh and you can always get up and find another table if they make you uncomfortable, thats be beauty of online poker, there's lots of tables out there so you don't have to be stuck on one.
Its also just a matter of time until the poker sites develop bot detection and destruction software. Its already in some clients.
I can remember people getting unhappy about bot-clients in Netrek, way back in 1994...
I have written over 900 book reviews
Wait a minute, while I shed a tear for the online gambling business. There, I'm OK now.
If the bots proliferate (and they will, because they are profitable), the online casinos will die.
What's the problem? Wall Street allows bots, and it works fine. You can even get packages with useful APIs for your trading system.
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Punk Buster anyone??
First of all I have to say I entierly support the people writing/running the online poker bots. They have found a clever way of winning and I find the intellectual competition between various bot writers far more stimulating than people just playing poker (I also think all those rules in F1 racing to reduce the benefits from creative engineering are horrible especially as this undermines the supposed purpose of racing as fueling research).
While some people might argue that using poker bots is wrong because it is a violation of some user agreement with the casino consitancy requires us to give no more credance to the casino liscensce agreement than any other clickwrap. Even if the Casino has a EULA type agreement preventing bots how is this really any different than a hypothetical clause in the MS EULA requiring that you won't dual boot linux or use OSS in general? In both cases the company is demanding you not use your own computers in the way you choose so as to protect their profits. We should treat both cases exactly the same.
Of course this isn't to say that the online casinos shouldn't do what they can to detect and evict bots (though seizing their money goes too far...you can ban whoever you like from your sight but stealing their money is a whole other matter). This brings me to the title of this post. No, I don't think that this poker bot or even poker playing in general will create significant advances in AI.
However, the battle between the automated bots and those trying to detect (or even take advantage of) the bots does offer real promise. Online casinos are only the tip of the iceberg, I fully expect the war between bots and anti-bots to only get more ferocious and spread from casinos and MMPOGs to more and more online activities. Finally their will be competitive pressure to develop incrimentally more and more sophisticated AIs dealing with more and more types of situations.
Unfortunatly, the academic community is particularly ill-suited toward developing integrated human like AI. We know from brain research and evolution that incrementally equipping and improving a system gradually with pragmatic hacks and adding specialized functional subunits can create human-like intelligence (it made us). Moreover, the continued difficulties faced by AI research suggests that no simple elegant algorithm will serve. If you want a computer to do all the things a person does you you need to program that computer with all hundreds of specialized sub-functions our brains posses. In short no clever idea will allow us to circumvent the fact that human like AI will take a massive number of lines of code.
Unfortunatly, while the academic community is very apt at creating algorithms for well specified functions, e.g., computer vision, it is very poor at creating massive integrated applications. While the core concepts and algorithms for the OS, database and the like have often come from academia it isn't a coincedence that the complex fully featured non-reasearch versions are either commercial or open-source. Quite simply academia rewards novelty and creativity not dilligence and the quality of the final product. As a CS prof you are far better off (and have more fun) testing your own pet idea or at best creating a demonstration app with a few other research group members than incrimentally contributing small features to a massive code base.
Only the commercial software companies and open source communities have the sort of reward structures suitable to creating usefull AI. In these communities it is overall product usefullness that is rewarded and many people are happy to make incrimental improvements even if they won't make for a good paper. I just hope these bot wars provide the begining baby steps necessery to get some of these projects rolling.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
WinHoldem is known to be a weak, generally *losing* pokerbot. It's been around for years, and this is the general concensus by people who have actually used the bot.
There are better bots available, even free ones like http://www.holdemkiller.com/ .
Not a very good bot? You've got to be kidding me. Any bot that is profitable is a good bot. Now consider that this is only ONE bot instance. Whats to stop someone from setting up a bot farm?
Can you imagine 100 bots all averaging +30 dollars a night running every day? That's over $1 million a year. And why stop at just 100?
And these bots will only become more and more sophisticated (in part to become better earners and in part to avoid detection) You'll have bots that log on / lout out in scheduled fashion to model themselves as "regular" players (who tend to play on the same days/times as a matter of habit) etc.
Think big.
The problem is that playing against a team of players in Hold Em is quite different than everyone for themselves. Several people are getting this wrong.
The team can decide who has the strongest hand and the weak hands can stagger their bets to lure an opponent into betting more or getting out of the hand. Not only a statistical advantage with knowledge but also a finer level of control with the game.
The surprise? This happens in real life in real casinos. Regulars will team up on new people and then fight for the money between themselves. They even make crappy TV shows about it.
I use the Poker Robot at PokiBot.com, and it does alright for me. Slowly makes a little bit of money. This is defintely the way thing are going, and poker bots are only going to get more sophisticated.
Using real-time odds calculating software players can get the same information the robots use to determine their own betting, without cheating. For example, Pokulator software tells a player their overall odds of winning as well as chances to make a particular hand. This is the kind of information the robots are programmed to use, but armed with this information and a brain a real player could beat out a robot.
I believe that too. Just musing about perception, that's all.
Any solid bias would be detected fairly quickly, I'm sure. We've sure not seen any evidence for the contrary. The larger number of hands do take some getting used to.
Blogging because I can...
If people are willing to pay to click on ads for the few pennies per click they get, why not pay someone to bet according to a bot's rules? Maybe that's India's next bet to keep off shoring market share?
You could monitor the bet and the bot's recommendation to ensure they match, even pay a percentage of tech wins to the person making the bets. A live person could respond to chat, and handle several tables at once or a simple phrase or two - which would be appropriate for the question.
You wouldn't even need people who spoke English - they could respond in their native tongue.
Off course, an on-line poker house could run the same bot for every game and match bet's with the bot's recommendations and use that to id bot's.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This casino http://3151766.thegoldcasino.com/ welcomes bots - several of their contests have had obvious bot competitors, but seemingly none have won contests. Many of the bots seem to be simple-minded slot machine yankers so far.
It's nothing personal, we just hate hypocritical idiots.
"a serious problem for the online gambling business."
IMO, organized gambling belongs in real, physical casinos. Not on the intarweb.
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
I'm a chumpette, you insensitive clod!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
www.poki-poker.com
ive been using this for about a year now. the AI uses lots of techniques in combination (neural nets, adjustable weight tables etc) to perform opponent modelling and factors that in to strong mathematical play (ie odds, pot odds, implied odds and reverse implied odds).
one thing to note that it is an extremely strong player in limit holdem, but a half decent player can beat it consistently in the much more 'complex' no limit variant of the game.
in conclusion, theres two points to make.
a) it is likely there are good bots making money at in (low) limit holdem games
b) there are many more bots that are in development that are likely to be losing money, especially in NL holdem.
NB:
to anyone who thinks poker sites are rigged, just take a quick look at the number of hands player in the top corner of the window next time your playing - it will read around 1 billion on many sites. doesnt take long to figure out at around 20c profit per hand played that its an absolute cash cow without needing to generate/fix hands.
anon
That makes me a saaaaaaad online poker player.
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On what basis is gambling evil? It appears that the reason is that he was brought up to believe this. Accordingly it's okay to rip off those who haven't been taught this. This is in truth relativism: to avoid relativism, you need reason beyond value inheritance.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Or perhaps that should be. . .
The world is a science fiction novel when this sort of thing doesn't seem weird.
-FL
Poker bots do not reduce the rake taken by the casino -- the house makes the same dollars every day.
Poker bots steal from the players -- the REAL PEOPLE who are being suckered. And what is worse, because these bots in fact suck, they only take money from the weakest tiers of players -- who are least likely to realize they are being taken.
Recalculate -- these guys are arrogant and evil. Is it any surprise this guy went to Oral Roberts U?
Chess bots are known to play a far different game of chess than humans, which is why some grandmasters are far better against humans that bots, or vice versa.
By combining these, what you have is essentially two seperate gaming "intellegences" -the human playing an intuitive game, and the computer playing the statistical game - working together to play chess, or poker, at a level above either individually.
Here's a thought: is it possible that the house itself is using bots? I mean, these online poker sites are already in legal offshore havens without any gambling commission to monitor them. You have only their word for it that they're playing the game fairly, and their word isn't worth very much. What's to prevent them from introducing their own bots in a game occasionally to further tilt the winnings towards the house?
http://torrentspy.com/download.asp?id=233376
...is that WinHoldEm has been out for years. Apparently, it only works if you use two PC's (one to run the poker software and capture screenshots, one to run WinHoldEm) as the majority of poker rooms online will ban accounts and ask questions later if the WinHoldEm software is detected on a PC that's logged into their room.
:)
Their banning users of screen-capture software at Party Poker too, just to be sure
My Mind Is Rewired. Is Yours?
If you've got a million hands in online poker I have just one suggestion..... Look into "Real Life" with "Real People"...
Business is Business and Business must grow, Regardless of crummies in tummies you know... -Onceler
If the scourge of bots threatens the business, the sites can force players to play with webcams focused on them and their computer setup.
I can sieze control of almost any client. I can read your memory, i can scan your gui, and i can manipulate you with io anyway i see fit, whetether you're a browser or custom client.
gameguard or other anti-debugging features are small obsticles on my way.
currently coding bots for a mmorpg, as a hobby, this seems like a challenge that could pay off *faster* than in the mmorpg world.
- CyTG
This guy makes the same excuses that cheaters in online gaming use, it's not real, it's virtual, everyone is doing it so you should too, etc, etc, etc...
All it boils down to is this guy has no moral ethic about fair play and people playing at their best using what only God($diety) has given them.
Jerk.
Think about it - all the way down to the reports of ecological damage and problems of David Brin's "Earth"...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Read your post and we gave it a shot last night.
It seems we are better players than we were when we first gave the ring games a shot. Had a decent evening without too much trouble. ---thanks for nudging us back that direction. Several thousand hands will do that it seems! We made enough to easily pay for a few buy-ins. (nice) Risk does seem lower now than it was eariler on.
Clearly we looked at far too many hands and were not properly assessing our outs in relation to potential winnings. Of course that means our play was simply not that solid back then. Good analysis.
I'm going to amend my earlier advice somewhat. If you are building skill, I still highly recommend the tournaments. It's easy to manage your money and the returns are very good, once your play reaches the point where you regularly place. This can be done with the cash games, but I think it's cheaper to do in the context of a tournament. Maybe that makes better sense overall.
This is one of the reasons why I just love slashdot. No matter the topic, there is always something of value to be found here!
Blogging because I can...