Bots are extremely prevalent, but no one is looking for them. Sites have been losing 20% cash game volume a year since black Friday, and a higher % than that at higher stakes.

What did you describe bots as? Bots these days are likely computer programs on a laptop beside an eastern European making minimum wage. They either screen scrape or have the operator input action and boards, and the laptop spits out an answer. The bot, just like current pro's, is attempting to get better and better at the game of poker, and it's in a game where the conditions change every table, and with extremely high variance.

The difference between current bots and good pro's stats wise is narrower than it's ever been, and a lot of these bots will be playing multiple sites simultaneously, so you can never get anywhere near decent samples on 1 SN before they change their strategy.

They are vastly different than aimbots your Valve friend will have experience with. I'm not as experienced with your other friends area of expertise, but my hunch is it's something completely different.

Sites don't care about bots, the answer on how to compensate players cheated by bots has never been answered, and it's a question that the sites want to avoid. They also don't want to send out emails announcing they have failed their players.

Regulators are all seemingly completely useless. If you look at the little information we have from the UKGC, who appear to be the most interested in actually helping their players, you will be extremely dissapointed. They recently had a survey actually. I started it and looked at the questions, the sense I got was "these guys don't have the slightest ****ing clue what they are doing, gonna be a waste of time to deal with them".

And then as a player you realize that the bots have reached a point where you need a significant amount of technical know-how to be able to detect them with a high degree of certainty (at higher stakes at least). If you are good enough at poker, and have the programming and statistical skills to find them, you would also be able to make a significant amount of money doing something else. Whereas to detect bots you will need to invest in hand histories, your time, and your reward will be a site stonewalling you for months and then banning half the accounts and telling you you should be grateful.

You can google poker bots, and you will find a fairly active forum with an out of the box bot that has worked for the vast majority of the past 7-8 years on almost all top poker sites. Sites don't give a **** about bots, and there are some excellent ones out there already. Vanilla NL has almost no time left, and as time moves on I think it will be sites creating new games, bots learning to conquer them, continuing ad nauseam.

Are you really implying that sites are welcoming of bots because cash game traffic is declining?
Hint: Do you really think sites give a **** about cash game traffic, (especially high stakes where rake % is really low), when they have lower edge-higher variance, more raked offerings?

2p2 mods are just so funny and comically ******ed

Captcha

There I just Solved the bot issue. Now let's get back to legalizing online poker.


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I strongly disagree with Roger and raidalot.

State-by-state regulated United States poker where you need to have a valid SSN with the addition of the retina scanner technology* that needs to verify that said person is at the computer whenever they are playing. If they get caught cheating they have to pay big fine and then have to face jail time. couple this with limiting the highest stakes running and I don't think people would risk cheating for not very big-gain.

I want to say it was you Roger that said that the highest games that should be running is NL 600 along with Western player pool segregation for sustainable online poker. I don't know about the highest stakes being 600 but there definitely should not be anything over nl5k(nosebleeds have been and will continue to be idiotic) with fenced off markets. pretty much agree with what you posted in those threads.

*this was floated around in some California legislation as a way to prevent underage people from being able to gamble.

You do not think this is stoppable? I don't see how this is a very big concern. the very small percent of winning poker players when they play poker need to always have webcams running with everything they are doing when they are playing poker being monitored. If sites become suspicious they look over and do an investigation.

ring games... bots cant do ****

You cannot possibly be serious right?

Of course they do, why would they offer cash games otherwise? Are you really questioning whether a poker site likes money? Hint, nvg is full of ******s.

Whether the money is generated from the cash games itself or through people being introduced to poker through cash games and moving to other formats, cash games are obviously extremely important to sites. The fact you are too slow to understand this, while attacking rogers point, baffles me.

I also think what roger wrote is extremely plausible and to just deny it out of hand is stupid. Whether that is actually the correct answer or not is up for debate though.

of course I'm serious. only way I can think of that would stop the bots. in order for online poker not to eventually be destroyed by bots, this needs to be done.

lol another 2p2 mod, this one with questionable reading comprehension- somehow not surprised though.
i've never questioned whether a poker site likes money, in fact i believe they do- that's exactly why they are trying to their best to get rid of high edge formats or skew the system by increasing rake or eliminating table selection.

to answer your q, yes certain cash formats like hu, or certain high stakes cash games have been removed from sites' offerings.
sites will offer cash games, they will just never be a priority and sites will also do their damn best to eliminate edges.

and of course it matters whether the rake generated is from a "grindable" format like cash games, or higher variance- low (zero) edge format.
sites don't like money taken out of the ecosystem, and they don't like consistent winners (that's why spins/casino verticals are pushed, and you have puppets like dnegs saying rec deposits last longer in these formats)

under the current environment, all types of winners including bots aren't exactly welcomed. (so rare exceptions would be house bots or -ev bots)
to even imply that they are welcomed, because cash game traffic is on a decline is a huge LOL

Yeah, I think there is a very real chance of this.

They can only be stopped by The Terminator!!!

Human players will drop out of online poker, once they realise the untraceable bots are unbeatable, and the humans will treat it like a spectacle, watching the battle of the bots, and learning from watching the bots how to play perfect poker, and then trying to copy that by playing that way in live poker.

The next set of problems will start when bots start entering live poker tournaments.

Within the next 10 years the WSOP Main Event winner may be a computer, with humans lucky to even minimum cash.

Sure, the person watching the program could type "howdy". Point being that as soon as an account reaches serious +ev consistently, the baby sitting would be ever .more demanding to the point of having to actually have to converse with a mod to sit in again. Plus if you are still "crushing" after extended periods of time massively +ev you would become a huge target. Scrutiny would become cumbersome to you and your 10 laptops enough to become a real problem to maintain effectualy. Nobody can maintain huge margins forever and be invisible. Plus, try typing to 3 mods simultaneously w/o f'ing up. Again, just my two cents.

It really is a big problem. If it were legal then registering with a gaming board could also be a deterrent. (I'd required) maybe register your ip address for a single account too. At least there is a conversation going.

Another obstacle that could be erected would be that any profit over initial investment must be maintained 30 days b4 withdrawal with special attn to chip dumps. Employing independent inspectors to monitor could help in this. Unfortunately, trump would probably eo this cumbersome regulation out of existence so as to help the "job creators". You just gotta love the regulations that are never really published that are so devastating to our economy. Can't wait till we can once again dump coal mining waste into creeks and rivers. Finally coal mining will be a cash cow again. West Virginia is open for business again! Come to WV and swim the black waters. Oops, I mean BACK waters. My bad. Sorry, those Darn alternate facts strike again.

So you think recs will gladly hook up their webcams to play a card game online?

While I'm not saying I support his idea, it's not going to make for a very productive discussion when you completely change what he was suggesting:

If it was only a program to Id me I would, then only when active in a hand. I walk away for a cup of Joe sometimes between hands. Also, any body have any idea of the prevalence of bots in the omaha formats? Also, at what levels do you think that the highest % of bots in nlhe would be likely as of today? And at this time would draw games have any significant "infection" if at all? Yeah, yeah, it sux grammatically. It's 3:30am here.

How am I changing what he is saying? He said "winning players", so when a new account sunruns a cash game with 1,5 BI BRM he is basically suspect and then you put a webcam in his face. Sometimes a fish runs hot, even for extended periods of time and what story is he going to tell his friends about online poker when he gets restricted and put under these kinds of sanctions.

idea: anti-ocr/hooking measures and let legit software use an api as long as it also has anti-ocr/hooking measures?

It seemed obvious to me, especially since he mentioned the "very small percent" of winning players, that he was referring to those who had been proven winners over a decent sample size. If I'm mistaken and he meant to implement it in the way you're suggesting, you'll have my apologies, but I find it hard to believe that was his intent - that would indeed be pretty ridiculous.

yeah I clearly meant long-term winners. not some fish playing poorly and running hot. bots do not play poker poorly.

no idea on the prevalence but there have been bots beating plo (see: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...78/?highlight=).

Right it would make (some) sense to do it on long term winners only but then you still haven't solved hit and run accounts plus he also mentioned

which definitely applies to everyone and I have a hard time thinking recs and even regs are ok with that.

well I think fenced off player pools such as state-by-state legislation would definitely be able to prevent the bots with some strict anti-bot methods and a governing body that will punish people getting caught cheating. what happens now? botters get their accounts closed and the skeleton rolls they keep on site confiscated.

I'm not super familiar on the California legislation but I know at one point they were talking about a bill that had it such that you needed to be able to verify there were no underage gambling going on. That was one of the safeguards.

yes some players will not be okay with it regs and recs alike. i don't really care if it results in a smaller player pool it obviously will. I'd rather be playing online poker with less people in the future than have the game die b/c of bots

For sure. Webcams could only be a partial solution, and if it were applied of course botters would change their habits to try to ensure their accounts didn't fall into this category. I'm far from sold on the idea, but when I've seen it suggested in the past I think it was usually based on the premise of everyone having to use a webcam, which isn't realistic IMO - this more limited suggestion at least seems plausible.

My scenario of the implementation of scrutiny would kick in "progressively" with increasing levels of caution. A player would have to run quite well and consistently over ev over say 2.5k hands before even rudimentary suspicion would kick in. Once you Figure out what profit needs to be to justify bottling expenses you have a decent idea of defensive measures to increase appropriately. I personally do not see retina scanning for these purposes to be overly intrusive since this is a voluntary sport. Once again, a fine tooth comb would surely be better.