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."

Comments

Is Zonk an editor bot?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would certainly explain a lot, especially if Taco wrote it.

Re:Is Zonk an editor bot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Taco could not even write something that almost seems as if it could, in a completely screwed-up way, work.

He got as for as
rob@gayhost: cat hello.pl
#! /usr/bin/pearl
print "helo world!!!1!!"

rob@gayhost: ./hello.pl
bash: /usr/bin/pearl: No such file or directory


in his "Perl for complete and utterly hopeless Dummies"-book until he gave up frustrated, muttering something about "Gates was right already, fucking open sores bullshit, Linux sucks".

Re:Is Zonk an editor bot?

[Baricom]

<?php

for ($submissions as $s) {
  if (($s->news_for_nerds && $s->stuff_that_matters && $s->dupe_count <= 1) || ($s->category == 'Google') || (rand(1,10) > 5)) {
    $s->make_inflammatory();
    $s->add_random_speling_errors();
    $s->post();
    sleep(86400);
    $s->post();
  }
}

?>

Why not do what casinos do?

[Limburgher]

If you're caught cheating, you're escorted out.

Sometimes, to a shallow ditch in the desert.

Hard to implement online, actually. Nevermind. :)

Re:find a flaw

[ikkonoishi]

Generally a torpedo down the exhaust port works.

If that fails try throwing an old man shooting lightning from his fingers into a conveniently placed pit to the energy core.

Look to the westerns for the answer.

[Helios292]

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.

Re:Poker Cheaters

[sydb]

Darwin never sleeps.

Must be a bug, OSX sleeps; what version are you running?

Welcome!

[kiddailey]

I, for one, welcome our poker playing... oh nevermind.

It's coming:

[ImaLamer]

We don't deal to droids in here!

Ok, sorry I got another one...

[ImaLamer]

"I fold"

"Fold? I can't let you do that Dave"

Re:find a flaw

[FosterKanig]

having infinite stamina.

Don't tell my wife, she'll want one.

Re:Nice publicity!

[Anonymous Coward]

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*

Ahh, you must be a Microsoft Windows security software engineer.

it's taken this long?

[danny]

I can remember people getting unhappy about bot-clients in Netrek, way back in 1994...

Re:find a flaw

[SlowEmotionReplay]

"You see, pokerbots have a preset win limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own dollars at them, until they reached their limit and shut down." Zapp Brannigan

Old news in the poker world

[Rufford]

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.

Re:Poker Cheaters

[jonadab]

> > [Games should be fun -- not business, IMHO.]
> Anything that involves real money is, or becomes, business.

This is why we only play for M&Ms. We assign values to the different colors, and use them as chips. Everybody brings a pack of M&Ms to the game. Eating your profits is explicitely allowed. Somehow, mysteriously, we always seem to run out of our M&M poker chips, and then the game's over. Funny how that works.

I've heard of playing for homemade cookies, as a form of higher-stakes game, but to me it always sounded a bit too much like a way to put on weight.