I think you underestimate the amount of data entry that this would require. They would have to input player names, player stack sizes and bets for every street, player positions and all cards.
Even with an advanced form to simplify the input of data they would be facing an insane amount of work to keep even 1 table going. So even if they did see your answer as a solution we would go from botters being easily able to run 10 - ∞ tables (using multiple accounts for the higher numbers) to botters struggling to keep up with 1 table.

You can scrape data from a HDMI/VGA source...

I don't understand how this counteracts my initial post.

'I believe the solution may be fairly simple. Bots rely on being able to read images/pixels on a poker table. If you make the colours of/on cards and player
action indicators dynamic (changes in pixels between hands barely noticeable to a human) then the bot will no longer be able to read information from the table.

This relatively small software change could potentially completely eliminate the problem. '

Why would data scraped this way be any different to the dynamic data already rendered unreadable to the bot?

Pretty disconcerting that people who tmake bots that crush so hard yet seem pretty naive about finding ways to hide them can get away with it for such a long time. Makes one wonder how many bots are/were playing and winning in the pools that will never get found out about.

Isnt the hole card sharing a big inherent problem of multiway poker and PLO speficially anyway? Is it something people who play in these pools suspects happens on a regular basis or something you worry about a lot?

I'm not convinced any of it is unreadable. If bots are reading ever-changing screen shots, OCR software from 10 yrs ago would have no trouble interpreting the info.

is the card collusion even confirmed?

I recommend everyone contacts poker news about this story

http://www.pokernews.com/contact.htm

Based on experiences with pokerstars security team in the past, doing this will make pokerstars take this more seriously.

Don't know if this has been posted yet but this is the copy/paste reply I got from pokerstars regarding this specific matter. The part I bolded confirms that these have been bots, right? And thus confirming that the general idea of "there are bots beating SSPLO/MSPLO on pokerstars" is correct

It simply is not true that it's in Stars' interest to encourage high volume grinders. The value of such players depend on the state of the environment: For a small site with little liquidity, the introduction of some multi-tablers will benefit the poker site. In Stars' current environment where grinders and the site compete for the fish's deposits, the grinder often has a negative effect. Stars don't get rich from their SNE cash players.

Your oversimplified model that liquidity leads to rake, which leads to profit is not the same as saying a high volume player increases Stars' profits. Your thought process is fundamentally flawed.

The reason it's important to correct this error is to prevent people for holding the absurd notion that bots serve the best interests of Pokerstars.

I am quite sure current bots don't use screen capturing to follow the game, and even if they would - it is almost trivial to write ocr/pattern detection that adapts to such visual changes.

I would rather reverse engineer the PS Client and write a modified version for professional botting. This way you have full input output control, you can easily circumvent their countermeasures (e.g. mouse movement detection) captcha popping up,debugging detection...

Having a glance at mac os x PS client - i am kind of disappointed, i would have at least expected some basic anti debugging mechanism and obfuscation.
Well, at least they haven't spelled all their function names like party poker does:
PGBots,investigationId,AlertBotDetectionFail,mBotA lertType,getOpenUrls..... seriously...

All that being said, you can make botting (much) harder, but at the and you can always and easily circumvent all of the countermeasures with use of screen capturing and virtual input device....

The only thing left is detection through statistical or behavioral abnormalities - but not only is this very error prone (and you would wan't to avoid false positives at all cost) - and bot rings will also adapt...eg i am sure the next network will not be running their bots 8 hour shifts 5 days a week... and try to not have too similar stats....maybe just play with each other to falsify stats...

My guess is that it is currently the collusion which gives them the largest edge, but that the botting edge will continue to increase rapidly. Three players sharing a quarter of the deck in PLO has to count for a massive edge, and hence why PLO is targeted as opposed to NLHE.

If it looks the same to a person, it is not difficult for a program to do a non-exact image comparison. I'd be surprised if the sophisticated bots out there now are just doing a simple exact pixel by pixel comparison. The ones that aren't could be updated almost immediately. That is a good idea to catch suspected bots though. Stars should blast out a set of minor changes to the card images and see which players immediately stop playing. You'd at least trap the bots using straight up pixel by pixel comparisons.

See my above post. I think a screen scraper makes sense only for single players assistive software. to run a Botring it is much more feasible to manipulate PS client and go from there...multible VMs, report game state to own controller app from where you can monitor and control 100 clients at once...

Even almost random card layout will not help you. If a human can interpret the info a computer can to...they have same information at hand...

so i guess the PLO community has all emailed stars to say they're moving their play elsewhere until they clean the game up? or will they just keep on playing as usual, at least as long as their legal software assistance indicates there's a fish to be parted from his money?

he was more than likely forced out or is now working behind the scenes secretly. njdge wouldnt give pokerstars a license to operate winthin the US with him around apparantly. however since then still no license and even politicians saying it would be very soon have been wrong.

i guess they been seeing something they didnt like at pokerstars and thats y the long delays

http://www.bluff.com/news/opinion-ba...cessary-66259/

read the parts about bad actor clauses are superfluios. sorry for the other clutter in that article

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Of course there are.if you make good money now from online poker be smart with it because you won't be making it in ten years.

now would be a good time to push for that rake decrease imo.

can't beat the colluding bot rings if you can't even beat the rake

lol

Any game with serious money involved where AI's can be programmed to beat humans will ultimately kill its online self

And yet almost everything about the software and rewards program is geared towards mass-tabling and high volume. Funny that.
Do they offer them Porsches and a VIP manager in the hope they will go play somewhere else?
Obviously the model is more nuanced than portrayed, and the environment is in a constant state of flux, making it very difficult for the operator to find a balance that maintains liquidity and/or maximizes profit. Bots that crush the game certainly upset the balance.
But the bottom line is that when Baazov tucks into his lobster he probably doesn't care if it was paid for by a human rakeslave in England or a bot farm in Kazakhstan. He might start caring if he believed the bot farms will drive everyone else out of the game and put him out of a job.

this is no PS issue, this is a online poker issue.

yes, and regs have time and time again ignored wider online poker sustainability issues when it harms their self interest, that's the point

Correct but who dominates the market share?

Someone somewhere has to start setting a precedent. Who better than the market leader... with what is it... something like a 65% share of the online poker market.

Cant seem to find Lee Jones post itt can someone point me in the right direction?