Quote:
Originally Posted by javi
Post some sample code from your bot scripts as proof. This whole thread is filled with vagueries that come off as a disgruntled small stakes player who couldnt beat the game and was convinced he was losing to bots, so he just threw together a lot of common sense assumptions about how bots might work. You cant give your name, fine. You cant name the software, fine. So post some evidence of the software in form. Post some sample scripts that you created. Post a screenshot of the bot software but omit the title.
I did in fact name some of the software I had experience with and posted pieces of my code (albeit older, less sophisticated code). Screenshots and stuff detailing software/code have been edited out or deleted by the mods and I have been instructed not to post such information publicly. You can go back to the first couple of pages to see the mod comments on why I shouldn't post that stuff. If you can convince the mods otherwise, I can post more detailed stuff including the PT integration steps that one of the guys in this thread has been in disbelief about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SanchoHH
I am still interested why you think that sites are "looking the other way".
To me, this statement implies that these sites are not taking proactive actions to detect bots although they could reasonably take those steps.
What is it that they should be doing, but don't?
Couple of questions similar to this one so I'll try explain my logic. As a more pure thought exercise, bots are best type of customers for many sites. They play a lot of volume, fill up the tables, and pay rake; they wait patiently for deposits/withdrawals, they never complain or pepper support with e-mails, they're quiet, low-key customers who require very little maintenance from the support staff to keep happy. They also make up a significant chunk of most sites' income source. If you owned a business, would you really go out of our way to kick out your dream customers unless your hand was forced by the rest of the patrons?
Think about all of the bot rings or random bots that were exposed during the last few years. How many of them were exposed because players kept pointing them out to support over and over? How many of them were exposed because a site proactively investigated accounts that other players didn't write extensively about?
On a more practical note, in the botting community, most sites, other than Stars, are regarded as bot-friendly in that botters don't really have to worry about getting caught unless they attract a lot of complaints from other players. In terms of planning to escape detection, most threads/chat are concerned with how to appear "normal" on the table to other players, and less so about what kind of steps a particular site might employ to detect prohibited software. In the few months that I've frequented these places, I can remember only a handful of cases where a botter got "caught" *without* player intervention, and it was almost always because they tried to use someone else's info or a fake identity to try to cash out, or because of VPN use. (I think sites have different reasons for monitoring VPN use that's not really related to bots, but they do crack down on those pretty hard) So hundreds of threads on a weekly basis on multiple public botting forums complete with site-specific "how-to" guides, tips, advice, troubleshooting, and room reviews...but sites are unaware of this? Unlikely. Hilariously, one of the more popular plug-n-play bot also offers rakeback affiliate links for new signups with certain sites. No one's hiding. Look at the PartyPoker thread or the 888 thread to see how often regs are noticing bots and how little is being done to prevent them from playing.
To answer what sites could be doing, I think it's actually more simple than many of you think. 90% of bots are still based on screen-scraping and table-mapping techniques. Something as simple as forcing the client to update every 2-3 days with a new default cardback designs coupled with a new default background color might be enough to mess some bots up. Changing the fonts (or sizes) on the table, switching the box where player names are displayed with the box where the stack size is displayed, periodically changing the location on the table where the cards appear to be flopped or dealt, coloring or sizing the the buttons differently, slightly offsetting the angles of the seats, changing the default card-face designs, inverting table chat/ player control divisions, etc. Like doing any of these or a couple of these every few days through a forced client update would make botting a bitch. Pretty much all of these suggestions are graphics-related and wouldn't really need revisions to any other parts of a client. If a site were to be proactive like this, the actual cost would be minimal and probably 90% of bots wouldn't survive. Until of course....the botting community adapted somehow.