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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."
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.
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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!
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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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?
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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"
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.
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The bot does nothing crazy. it knows the odds on everything. which means that it plays no better or worse than a human who knows the odds of each hand.
sure, it can tap into other bots playing so that it develops a huge advantage over other players, but so can two humans with an instant message or voice chat program.
unfair? you bet.
cheating when it's used stand-alone? hell no.
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Why wouldn't that hypothetical Indian just run the bot himself?
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Not *that* hard, though. Yes, it's possible to remain quite anonymous online, but if you're playing for real money, then you will have to identify yourself in some way so that the money can be sent to you - and I don't think you'd be able to get away with creating a hundred PayPal accounts.
The only ones who'll be able to get around that are the organised crime people, and I wouldn't be surprised if these really turn out to be a hard problem in the end. But casual players that just want to make money fast... not really, or at least not in the long run.
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statistically speaking... about 90% of them are chumps, yes. The other 10% win.
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?
Yes. Personally I have about a million hands logged in a postgres database. Any statistical analysis I've ever done regarding: 'how often should this scenario happen, versus how often DID it happen' has shown that it was on the level.
I personally generate thousands of dollars in rake each month, by playing winning poker. They could rip me off one-time for a few grand... or have all that money, every month, for as long as they exist and spread a fair game. There's no reason to kill the golden egg.
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.
Unfortunately, colluders exist. Fortunately, they're relatively easy to detect, and the information isn't "extremely valuable", it's "usually worthless" and generally "statistically insignificant". Sometimes these douchebags try to trap guys for extra bets, or run squeeze plays on them... though these are extremely exploitable strategies that will only work against the worst players. (and are easily detected by a review of the hands by the casino, should a player file a complaint)
In conclusion: stop talkin about things you don't understand, kiddo. I have no doubt that you lose at online poker, but the problem isn't that you're getting cheated.
$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.
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.