When you fold (or lose a showdown) you turn your cards face up. Obviously lots of downsides as well as upsides to this idea. But it would be a simple matter for a site to try it out. Perhaps the first round should be counterclockwise to avoid the late positions having an even bigger edge. Perhaps there should be a shot clock to keep people from spending too much time thinking about the extra info. Perhaps the exposed cards should stay exposed throughout the hand.

Players would obviously not like their playing style shown to everybody. Then again they could "bluff' by sometimes folding hands that they normally wouldn't.

I like the game because you have to adjust to the folded cards. But the other nice things about it is that colluders are screwed and I think no computer is powerful enough to be a real threat under these circumstances.

pretty sure computers are waaay better at calculating adjusted equities on the spot than humans. The only problem it would solve would be card-sharing colluders.

Head up bots are doing this kind of stuff. Ring game bots, I believe, are mainly following rules given to them by humans, not calculating strategies on the fly. And even if they were calculating equities, that is not enough to determine the best strategies when there are future rounds of betting.

In the long run, it doesn't matter. T-1000s are coming to destroy all poker bots and humans.

If your goal is to make it more difficult for computers then it's a better rule to make folding players show one card (they choose which one). That introduces an element of irrational behavior (there is nothing to gain anymore for a folding player so usual analysis doesn't work) and makes the game way bigger than being forced to show both cards.

why would more information help the game when its getting solved day by day.. ??

like thats counter intuitive

For colluders, the easier solution is to have the sites run an analysis of the play "post facto" through pattern recognition. No need to allow players to see cards they ordinarily wouldn't be able to see.

As for bots, a random pop up screen requiring typing in a word while out of a hand should make things more difficult, or at least, more expensive for bots to run.

Maybe at some point if you play enough games and/or profit enough you're required to use a closed system computer/phone that Stars sends you.

Given the low cost of the hardware needed and the trend of restricting poker software, it's no longer unimaginable.

Not sure a site like PS would have enough incentive though. They're the only ones I think that have the operations and potentially care enough to do something like that.

I'm not sure the OP idea works for the biggest botting issues right now, which appear to be short handed SNG bots/illegal software helper programs that are getting really good even at higher stakes games, and bots in 6+ player games of all types that have a good enough fixed strategy to collectively take a lot of money out of the low stakes games.

Why on earth would this thwart bots?

the information you reveal would open players up for more exploitation from machines

also no one would like it

Hmmm.

you are trolling right?

Let's see, who gains more from the information. The computer with the perfect memory who can auto adjust instantly and perfectly to the equity changes. Or the guy 18 tabling who never even sees what cards get showed. Or the fish who has no idea how to adjust to the info hes presented with.

I'm in

I don't want to speak for DS but I think his intent is to try to find a game, a variant, or some weird in-game stuff that will diminish the advantage a poker-playing bot would have. Typically it is easier to program a bot to play with a fixed (including mixed) strategy than it is program a bot to take into account in-game information.

If someone exposes Kd7d, the humans can adjust their views on other players' ranges. I am not sure that a bot can do that as easily. In fact, typically a bot does not really have "ranges" for its opponents. It has a set series of pre-programmed strategies based upon the action (the board, etc.).

It is not clear to me that it would be easy to pre-program an entire set of bot strategies which can take into account exposed cards. But, I could be wrong.

The cards can stay face up for the multitablers. As far as the computer I repeat that I don't think that the computers are being programmed the way you think they are. I believe they are following rules (that the computer itself may have come up with away from the table). Someone can correct me if I am wrong about that.

And even if I am wrong, the anti collusion aspect is more important than people seem to think. Smart colluders who know each other's cards exactly, aren't often caught if they don't go too strong. But with their cards face up every hand even their subtle strategies will be spotted.

From what I understand from the thread about the botter, he had to manually input any changes that needed to be adjusted to the bots overall strategy. So assuming the person that runs the bots regularly is capable of making these manual adjustments, you would just see the bots take a little longer to catch up. The collusion part makes a lot of sense though, assuming someone is capable of spotting more subtle collusion tells.

David, yes, they are following rules. However, what's stopping programmers from including "calculate adjusted equities with shown folded cards" in those rules? As many others pointed out, this would increase, not decrease bots' winrates.

And card sharing colluders can be detected in other manner, as shown by another poster above.

More information = more advantage for a good bot

Cheater HUDs that calculate equities on the fly would benefit massively too

Bots calculate equities of ranges and of course it would be incredibly easy to incorporate dead cards into those calculations.

It would stop collusion through card sharing that is true since everybody would have that information.

Also over a big enough sample the bot will have a full database with all of your open folds/shows and showdowns and will literally know your exact ranges for every spot.

Is that useful? With huds you might know the frequency but with this you can get the exact composition of any range.

The idea that bots can be thwarted by changing game mechanics is absurd and makes no sense.

Any game decision that a human can make can also be made by a bot. DUCY?



In addition, people investigating collusion online can already see all hole cards, so revealing hole cards to people who are not investigating collusion (eg, opponents) makes no sense. Is this reason that online play is safer against collusion than live play (where all records of who is dealt which cards is destroyed at the end of every hand).

With software becoming better, hardware becoming cheaper, bots will assimilate online poker and nothing you can do about that, except making the transition to live play.

Just stop thinking altogether please

Great idea to make the game easier for bots and colluders