Originally Posted by chirpy

Can any of the Ongame regulars please confirm whether or not these bots are all still active?

Originally Posted by seoulken

have insanely high W$SD % - off the top of my head, I can think of two that are 13/15 at showdown - small sample size, I know, but 80%+ win at showdown?

Originally Posted by Pummi81

Running good or nut-peddling.
Sample-size way too small and not really a stat to look for if trying to spot bots anyway.

Originally Posted by Pummi81

Sample-size way too small and not really a stat to look for if trying to spot bots anyway.

Originally Posted by enigma121

good number of new players have arrived
suspicious???

Originally Posted by seoulken

Again, my sample size is very small, but it looks very bot-esque.

Am I allowed to post sn's of suspected bots? Can I post their stats?

Originally Posted by Thomas Bakker

Hi guys,

I agree there's a huge pandemic of online bots already out there, and it's only going to get worse. Right now, the existing sites (except, to some degree, PokerStars), seem absolutely incapable of handling this, as evidenced by the fact that right now there are huge bot farms and entire "companies" in eastern Europe focused solely on botting, making millions.

NoahSD and I were hired by Cake poker last year to analyze ~80 million hands played on their site to see if anyone had exploited security holes in their software -- We did this by developing statistical techniques which analyzed player tendencies, e.g. how good players were at reading other players. We succesfully worked with this huge dataset, and we did a ton of experimenting with our own AIs (offline, to let them generate fake data to test our techniques on). In other words, we have the tools and experience to actually do something against these bots.

Please note that at Cake poker we did not do bot detection. There's a difference in the type of techniques that would be used, and we can't directly use what we developed there to detect bots. However, the experience is portable, and so are many of our tools (database software, some statistical stuff, our AIs to generate test-data, etc). In other words, we have experience working as independent auditors of poker sites, and we've worked on a much more difficult problem than botting.

We would be willing to work with the poker sites (even multiple sites at the same time) to coordinate between them and develop and implement techniques to deal a blow to the botting communities. We are confident we could take down a ton of bots, using a variety of techniques. Unfortunately, sites are generally not very interested in hiring outside people to work with their data. However, in the Cake poker case, we have already proven reliable (we had access to all of their data), and we've shown that we are capable of doing what needs to be done. So, if anyone can convince the sites to let us take up this job, Noah and I would be willing to take this on.

-Thomas Bakker & Noah Stephens-Davidowitz
(founders of SubjectPoker.com, though this would be unrelated)

Originally Posted by FrankShank

Thomas Baker made this post in the other bot thread. We should pressure ongame into taking up his offer. We will feel better knowing some one independent is involved, and it gives ongame a chance to prove they are actually doing something. If ongame are serious about setting up a bot task force, it would be stupid of them not to let Noah and Thomas help.

Originally Posted by Laughing Assassin

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this has come up before. Here is my 2BBs...

If this continues, if something doesn't change, online poker will soon be bot against bot. The game as we know it will die.

What I propose next may sound crazy but hear me out. I think that a (partial) solution to this problem could be for someone to open a 'bot friendly' poker site, i.e. a real money site where it is within the rules for bots to run.

This would channel the bot traffic away from our poker sites. There would be incentives for the bot runners to go there: no risk of their roll, no effort/time needed to disguise their bots, they could run 1000 tables 24/7 if they liked.

Couple this with increased security at proper poker sites and you have a 'carrot and stick' approach rather than just the 'stick' approach that we have at the minute.

It's all about incentives - these CS geeks want to run their bots for real but there is nowhere for them to do it legally. The solution lies in making it really easy for them to run their bots somewhere other than on our poker sites as well as really difficult to run their bots on our sites.

If poker sites just make it difficult but there is no alternative then they will strive against it... and it looks like they are winning.

There'd be plenty in it for the sites too - rake from bots - human only sites with a good rep and no bots - happy players

Am I mad???

Originally Posted by Googy123

Why would a bot play a bot when they can molest regs and fish for a higher win rate?

Originally Posted by iGoSouth

It's somewhat amazing that you need a link but here it goes:

http://www.informationshield.com/intprivacylaws.html

P.S. Have you heard of Google?