Looks like you made a typo there but yes, I would say that program would be OK

Violates the T&C, pretty much goes against opponents' expectations, is harmful to opponents.

We're done.

LOL

I'm really not actually... may be hard to convince u of this, but I am not going to do it if I feel it is 'very' wrong. I agree that it is wrong, im just trying to work it out in my own head... what better way then getting into philosophical discussion?

TBH, i might not do it EVEN IF I am ok with it... first of all its going to be a lot of work, and secondly I don't have any programming knowledge and my buddy doesn't have (really) any poker knowledge. It would be a joint project and I could see it falling through even if I decided i want to do it.

... and I am interested in the conversation. Obviously I have to attempt to play devils advocate and argue that its ok otherwise the debate wouldn't go anywhere

In before Indianav8.

So, what's to debate?

Is that you, kur.osh?

At nanostakes, there are no good players. The players that play profitably there would obviously not lose money to your bot, but they would not win from it either (unless it's a completely unprofitable bot to begin with). The situation would be less profitable for them because there is one less fish sitting at the table, and because your bot would be taking the fish' money and thus there would be less for them to take.

Above 10NL you're welcome to try to make money with a bot ^^

I don't know. I am not you. People (including me) will hate/condemn you for doing this. You may or may not feel bad (it depends on your character). If fun/money/challenge is more important for you than things I mentioned above I would go for it if I were you.
I had similar choice when facing the choice of downloading illegal software/mp3's. One time in my life when I had no money I decided it's worth the risk. Now it's not worth it for me so I don't do it anymore. I accept some people won't like me for this.

Obviously it doesn't change the fact that I would prefer you not doing it

How the hell does it have any meaning here ?

Again, wtf ? You think cheating fish is somehow better thing than cheating better players ?

Your thinking doesn't make much sense, really.

"Lock and ban?"

Oh I think you were calling for the thread to be locked if you read the first word of your post.

I think this is the post of the thread and probably a conclusive argument, but to play devils advocate, here are some thoughts on the arguments:

1. It's against the TOC. For one thing, it seems more plausible that the way this works is the TOC tracks fairness, not that fairness tracks the TOC. That is to say, something can't be right simply by being in the TOC of the site because the reason it's in the TOC is presumably because it's fair.

Additionally, I think this argument has to bite at least one bullet in proclaiming that the use of sharkscope while playing is wrong. I do this all the time and I have a hard time beleiving that I'm doing anything wrong.

2. Not what your opponents expect. I assume the idea here is that if you opponents knew you were a bot they wouldn't play, but this might be true in the ordinary case of being a winning player. If a fish really understood that over the long run they are fundamentally incapable of winning money against me, they may not want to play. Similarly, most people don't know about HUDs, sharscope, poker table ratings, or awesome SNG programs like SnG wizard. It's at least unclear that people would continue to play if they did.

3. Harmful to others. If the harm is that other players lose money, then being a winning player is harmful to others in precisely the same way.

You are assuming the terms ban bots.

Now you're not even trying.

Also, in regard to the idea of a bot that just gives you advice and then you click the buttons, from Stars Online Poker Software FAQ:

There's a pretty clear implication that that sort of thing would still be against the terms, as it should be.

FWIW, I think Kvaughan articulated the rationalization I am using really well... Again, I agree that it is wrong on some level, i just want to find out how wrong it is

no no... what I mean is simply that regardless of what I do at lower stakes, fish will lose and winning players will win... If I were to implement a bot here, the fish will still lose, and winning players will exploit the bots tendencies and still win.

In fact, I imagine good players could crush the bot.

Granted, the bot would be taking fish money out of the pool so there would be less for the good players.

But the end result if I were to use a bot at the micros is no different (at least not in any way significant) than if I didn't

I agree that it would be against the TOS... but does it being against the TOS make it immoral? Is something that is considered illegal in the US immediately immoral? is it immoral to smoke marijuana?

I'm not saying you are wrong, but simply challenging whether or not using something that is against the TOS is also immediately immoral.

Yeah, you want to rationalize doing it because it isn't the worst thing in the entire world. Seriously, this whole thread is ******ed. It's wrong, unethical, against terms of play, and you know and acknowledge all this... so what's to debate philosophically? That it isn't worse than starving babies?

Lock this POS thread. But just before that, find out who's account this is and post their name ITT before lock. Then ban the gimmick and temp-ban the real account. This is a poker forum and there should be zero tolerance for this inanity, and especially in this particular forum, this crap should be insta-locked.

^Take a deep breath. It's a philosophy sub-forum. OP is trying to think his way through the ethics of botting. Even if it's obvious to many of us what the problems are, it is better to address OP's counter-points rather than shutting his openness down, locking the thread, and essentially cutting off his line of moralizing communication with a relevant peer group, such that he's left to mull over the thing by himself and probably bias his conclusions. At least he gets direct feedback this way. Trying to "police" OP in this forum for bringing up this topic is misguided. (At most, bookmark this thread and OP's id, privately notify mods, and use it as reference later if violations are committed/reported in the future.)

A lot of solid rebuttals have been formulated by other posters regarding your various arguments in favor of botting. Here's another that occurs to me: Even if you contend that your bot playing is functionally equivalent to you playing at microstakes, in that all fish who face you will lose the ~same, whilst good players will win or break even, there is a difference (among others) I'd mention: The bot does not get tired, and is infinitely scalable. So unlike you, the bot can play for hours, has no emotional vulnerabilities or fatigue, and can massively multi-table at no human cost to itself.

This to me is another factor to consider in the unfairness arguments that one can level at your hypothesis of equivalence between you playing or the bot playing.

Thanks a lot... I was going to respond to his post with essentially what you wrote, but it looks a lot better coming from someone other than me

... and again, TBH I doubt my friend and I would ever finish this project IF we even started on it. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it in the first place, not to mention the fact that we would probably flake on each other if I decided I was.

I wish I had started this thread a little more prudently and asked the question in a more broad sense... I regret that now and hope that future discussion can be a little less directed (in the sense of being directed towards someone who is contemplating it vs just a discussion about it)

Well it is a line from from one site, Poker Stars I believe, I don't recall the OP specifying Poker Stars.

Furthermore he asked about the morality of it, is it anymore immoral of a good player playing low stakes poker knowing he will take money off weaker players?

I have certainly been playing poker against a player who was so bad I questioned whether it was moral to play against him.
It got to the stage where I was telling him what my hand was and telling him to fold and showing him my cards afterwards.

Since you admit that this is a gimmick account, would it be ethical for 2+2 to record your gimmick IP address and forward it to poker sites who advertise here?

I am not saying that they would do this for sure... just want to hear peoples input.

You may be miss-taking my argument, so I'll be clearer.

First, I distinguish between arguably-ethical breaking of rules in a voluntary environment, and arguably-ethical breaking of rules that can't be avoided. No one has to play on (e.g.) PokerStars; everyone born in (say) the United States is realistically bound by US law, and in a practical sense bound by the laws of his own state.

I make the distinction because I think it is worse to break Stars' T&Cs than US laws (ceteris paribus). I think this because there is an additional issue with violating Stars' rules: you agreed to abide by them when you signed up. That's on top of whatever fairness issues are also there.

Now, it's a basically principle of contract law, for good reason, that one isn't bound to a contract term that's unfair or that someone could not reasonably have understood or believed was part of the contract. That's where the second and third prongs come in. If the term were unfair — and it's arguably unfair to ban something that doesn't actually give you an advantage over other players — then maybe it would be OK to break it, though I happen to disagree that that's unfair enough to make it OK. And if we were talking about something that everybody did or expected others to do, then again I think you could argue that holding someone to it is unreasonable, essentially because the person in some sense didn't really agree to it in a a conscious sense.

So consider Sharkscope. It's against the terms players agreed to, so as a default we should think breaking the rule is unethical, but we'll look further. It helps the player and isn't necessary for the game, so a rule against it is basically fair. But if the rule is unenforceable and as a result everybody understands that everyone else is doing it, then I think you have a case that it's not unethical. (I disagree, but my personal position is extreme.)

Re your addressing of my second point, I'm just saying that if bots were like Sharkscope or HUDs — ubiquitous and expected (let's assume arguendo) — then there would be a decent argument that using one is not unethical. That's not the case. Your argument that the fish don't really expect things like Sharkscope actually supports my position that using it is unethical. If you assume your own conclusion that it's not (probably because so many people here on 2p2 use it, so you've just grown up, in a poker sense, thinking it's OK), then of course you'll have a problem with the logic.

Re your counter to my third point: I'm saying that if the proscription is of conduct that does not harm anyone, there's an argument that it's OK. The inverse doesn't work: conduct that does harm people, such as playing well, is OK if it is an accepted, legal part of the game.



Please leave. You are making zero effort to further any discussion. I'm sure you find it amusing, but please get over it and let us enjoy intelligent and thoughtful conversation.

Also, I agree completely with lagdonk that this is a reasonable line of inquiry in this forum. Whether OP should use a bot really isn't and should not be discussed specifically, but whether doing so is unethical (as opposed to a violation of the terms, which it clearly is on the great majority of sites), and if so, why, is.

Related question: does the prevalence within a community of a certain act influence its morality?

For example suppose we conclude action A is immoral (such as botting, having a tracker, multiaccounting whatever) but we then discover it is common practice among half the players. Do we ever change our original opinion that A is immoral?

For example consider HH/PT...the fish have no clue it exists but it is obviously prevalent among the regs. Do we try to determine HH/PT's moral integrity seperate from the consideration that half the regs use it?

OT i guess but I think it would be interesting if there were poker sites where bots were allowed (bot only maybe... idk) where programmers and AI guys could get after it for real money. it definitely sounds like a fun project.

I would suggest not doing it/think it is unethical to do it on a site like stars where it is clearly against the TOC and goes against the expectations of the players.

i dont know anything about bots but isn't it just a computer program? so once you build it you can just put it on any computer? if this is possible than what would stop you from just amassing an army of bots?

ethically id say a majority of people are gonna say its wrong but also a majority of people would use one if they had the chance

I haven't read the thread, so presumably this has been addressed but it is clearly unethical since part of joining any poker site is agreeing to the condition you won't run a bot. Is that even controversial?

I don't think it matters whether it's fair/unethical/immoral with regard to the other players - the answer to that is irrelevant to whether you should knowingly break a commitment you have given in exchange for some rights.

Are you saying morality and ethics are the same thing?