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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!
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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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This is a pretty apt comment. I think professional poker players would love to play against a bot. It gives them a considerable advantage, because if they studied the bot they can predict what it will do.
There are, basically, two possibilities. Either the bot plays purely statistically. If that is the case, it may win against dumb players, but can break even at best against good players. Or, the bot tries to model its opponents and tries to take those models into account when playing. If that is the case, as soon as a good player recognises that a bot is playing, he can ensure that the bot will have the wrong model of him, and then exploit that.
And, of course, as the parent says, it is possible that the bot contains an exploitable flaw. The bot creator goes to sleep, someone on the net recognises the flaw and posts about it in a newsgroup, and by the time the bot creator awakes he is broke. I would not sleep soundly with a bot playing with my money.
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"
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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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.