Quote:
Originally Posted by uke_master
Because it is fraud. Or, in other words, "an intentional deception for personal gain". People think they are playing a person, but they are not, they are playing a bot and they make this mistake because you deliberately and intentionally defrauded them for your own profit.
Of course there are many other types of misrepresentation that go on. Some are condoned, others aren't. Multiaccounting has come to be strongly frowned upon, but for a long time was accepted and is a similar case of misrepresentation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron W.
Do you consider it ethical to violate the terms of service agreement?
This is a stronger argument, but it has always seemed to me that the ethics of the poker community sort of developed on their own, and where that fit with the terms of service, great . . . where it didn't, oh well. Things that I'm sure were violations of the terms of service for a while (multiaccounting Party skins to get around table limits, HUDs in the early days) were commonly accepted.
As far as I can tell, the real reason that bots are anathema is that they are seen as likely to be the death of the games. Good players that could beat reasonable bots still hate those bots provided they're good enough to beat fish. Thus, you are unlikely to find a community of poker players that will support it.
Regardless of whether your preferred ethical framework is legalistic or based on the norms of the community, you're going to have a very difficult time justifying a bot. Which is too bad, because I too have thought it would be a fun project to work on. But there's not much point in building it if I can't test it, and I don't think testing it is right at this point unfortunately.