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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.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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.
Poker is a skill game, that's why people can become pro's at it. That's why even semi-pro's like me can make a decent living off of it, especially now with the boom in popularity of the game.
A poker bot can play 10 tables at the same time and keep track of every statistic about all 90 other players at the tables.
Of course, playing ten tables at a time is a good way to get yourself noticed, but you could probably get away with 5 or 6 tables at a time. My brother-in-law plays 5 tables live, without a bot. He does, however, use Pokertracker, which helps him keep statistics on everyone he plays with, which in my opinion isn't cheating, it is just automating something that you could do manually. Having seen his statistics for the average 3/6 player on PartyPoker, I have no doubt that a bot could make money there. Maybe it wouldn't make 2.2 big-bets per hour the way the best human limit players do, but I have no doubt that 1 BB/hr would be easy. Play 5 bots at 5/10 and that is $50/hour. Run it 4-6 hours a day to avoid getting noticed by the admins and it wouldn't make you a millionaire, but it would be a nice chunk of change.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
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.