I sure hope they're not using the concept of physically impossible mouse movements as anything other than a pre-filter for suspicious activity.

A program for accepting speech input (which translates a verbal "Fold", "Call", "Raise" into a click on a button) would look the same as a bot with regard to mouse motions.

What if the same speech input program has the ability to watch the Full Tilt client just enough to implement a "Cap" verbal instruction (keep raising for me without further instructions)? Or a "Steal" verbal instruction (raise if the pot is unopened, otherwise fold)? Or a "Call down" verbal instruction (check/call all remaining streets)? Or "Call one" (call a single bet, fold to two or more bets)?

Is this botting? Well, it's a bot with very limited decision making capabilities, and it never does anything without being told. But it sounds like Full Tilt would probably suspend your account for playing this way, and the burden of proof that you're not using "artificial intelligence" would be on you. And I'm not so sure their decision would be favorable....

My argument is entirely rational and eminently sensible.

Any information about how a security system works will potentially be useful to someone therefore it is inadvisable to divulge such information.

This is a tenet so basic to security work that I am absolutely amazed that anyone would argue against it for even an instant.

Security through obscurity is not universally accepted.

i actually understand what your saying indaina and god knows if my 47k was froze i would want detailed explanation but i believe its beyond that .ft had it verified thru a third source. so if they were just after silly dont u think they woulda just said to bad so sad..when gambling on the net everyone goes in knowing that at any time the site could . (A) close down (B) just send a super user after you for your money (c) could just be crooked. (D) freeze your account .. its the chance we all take. So if you dont trust the security there why would gamble there . I just cant understand someone leaving that much $ in their account anyways.

This is plainly false. I keep telling you it is actually a ridicolously uneducated statement of you.

As you have no clue of botting, take this example: There is FULL information on how the https protocol and public/client cryptography works. There are books on that. It's studied in universities. The security system is 100% meaning 100% described and everyone in the field knows how it works. However, noone can maliciously benefit of this information and it makes https protocol no less secure.

sillysal - it's disappointing that you are not even mentioning whatever it is you think 'makes you look bad' just because you don't think it can do any good now.

If you are now pretty much saying that you are giving up on trying to get your money anyway then what harm could it do to mention to 2+2 what you 'bad stuff' you think it was that triggered this?

If you are truly innocent then it's possible that 2+2 as a whole could still be helpful. Not likely since Mike Haven remains unconvinced and wasn't able to swing whatever 'live test' for you. But if the chance is 1 in 10,000 that revealing more details on 2+2 could help you vs. 0 that you will get your money by not posting then it seems to me like it's worth it.

I fail to see what harm could come to you by posting everything you think and know.
If you were truly innocent I would think you would be posting every single detail that went back and forth between you and FT and Mike, etc etc.

But it's Mike who is the one to tell us about you wanting to go there to take a live test to show them or whatever.
By NOT telling us what's going on it just seems strange and like you have something to hide. In fact, you actually ARE hiding something. And for the life of me I can't understand why.

Lol, I was just about to post this very same link.

interesting quote for those who don't click:

At a guess, there are a good few thousand players using the popular AHK scripts to do just this - most just use mouse / keyboard / gamepad etc. but I remember someone hooking it up to IIRC "Naturally Speaking".

At most, this must be a pre-filter - otherwise I'd have heard of many a horror story by now.

Now this is fascinating.

I stick to the line of just entering single action per hotkey - I wonder if any more that that (your "cap" example specifically - only one future action) is enough justification for a ban based on this so called AI - which it certainly is not, but may appear to be...

Yes, but continually repeating an absurdity does not make it correct.

The plural of 'error' is not 'fact'.

Again, you demonstrate a very incomplete understanding of what security is.

At the moment no one has (to my knowledge) been able to break https.

That does not imply that having its full specification available would not be of assistance to someone who discovered the means to defeat the underlying technology on which it is based.

But this is not the type of security about which we speak.

What you are asking for is for FT to divulge specific data about what they look for in an attempt to detect robot activity.

Let me try and make it really, really easy for you:

Suppose we know that the security services look out for signs that air passengers may be terrorists.

It is fairly obvious that they will be looking at the passengers for 'tells'.

But if their prime tell was that terrorists always wore blue hats and only terrorists wore blue hats, it would be utter madness if the promulgated that information.

Yes, some terrorists may be aware of that tell and wear red hats instead but disseminating the information would make things vastly easier for any would be terrorist.

This is what you are asking FT to do.

We all know that they attempt to detect robots by the information that comes in to their systems from the users.

But if they start issuing detailed descriptions of which attributes of the users behaviour they are using then every starting out robot writer knows at least that pitfall to avoid.

Why you cannot see the fundamental truth of that logic and insist on attacking me with vague and non-specific insults is a bit of a mystery but I can't imagine you will impress anyone but yourself.

qpw,

Flip side is, we really have no idea that the "you has a blue hat" analogy isn't similar the extent of this super secret timing tell analysis.

If the security services were using such a simple and flawed method of detecting potential terrorists - and then imprisoning them without right to reply - do you not understand why the general public may be furious on finding this out... and why they may wish to find out the methods are more reliable than the suspected "blue hat" method, despite the advantages for future terrorists?

This is quite correct when you are discussing the ultimate security of a system, but that is quite different to what we are discussing here.

Ultimately it is easily possible to defeat any anti-robot system simply by making the robot tell a human which button to press (and a few other things).

However, we are not dealing with ultimate security.

What we are dealing with is the ongoing battle between the people who want to use robots and the people who want to stop them.

IF the people who want to stop them ever develop a completely secure system then the design/key concept becomes meaningfull.

However, at the moment they have very incomplete and defeatable systems so under that constraint they must limit the dissemination of data about the systems' design as far as possible.

Until today I have never encountered anyone who cannot understand the elementary logic of that.

Let me then explain you for (N+1)-th time what you don't wanted me to say N+1 times.

Taking your example exactly: Say the hint is - the terrorist wears blue hat. Say the airline company used this hint and they caught the terrorist, and they found gun. They must find the gun, otherwise based on what they will inprison him, on that he wears blue hat? At the end, there must be the gun. And you can pretty much show a photo of the guy and the gun.

I don't ask full tilt to reveal the blue hat hint (however by this example, which is not what I think full tilt did, is they said "we detected him by his hat, but we won't tell what color his hat was"). So again- I didn't ask fulltilt to reveal their hint of blue hat, I asked them to show the picture with the gun.

It is not even about "security by obscurity". It is about being able to show evidence when someone is convinced of something.

If you look up a bit you will see that I say something along similar lines concerning the reliability of the so called expert and the tells involved.

It is absolutely unacceptable that FT effectively thieve $47k from someone without giving them every opportunity to prove their innocence.

But it would be absurd to force them to do that by publically disseminating the specific tells they are using so that the 'baddies' know exactly what to avoid.

The difficulty is devising a test that would allow the victim to demonstrate that she really does play in that way without the use of a robot.

If we assume that FT are being honest, this would need to involve two disinterested and trustworthy observers.

One observer would be shown the output from the tell detector in sufficient detail that s/he could know that it was honestly displaying some player timing attribute(s). S/he would also be shown the output from the suspected robot operations.

The other observer would simply observe the victim playing manually.

If the victim was able to produce the same tells manually as FT claim she did using a robot, then she is innocent. If not, there is a fair chance she is guilty.

By the way, something else, for a casino there is no any interest (by itself) in eliminating bots. Bots do not have unfair advantage neither versus the casino, nor againts other players, and bots generate rake for the casino pretty much as any other player (there is one exception to this - bonus clearing bots, which casino don't like, but this is not the case here).

So the only motivation for a casino to remove bots (and this clause to exist in their EULA), is because many players do not want bots. I have not noticed some angry accusations of sillysal in this thread from other players, i.e. someone that noticed she is bot, actually the opposite, people said they were seeing her as human player. Therefore it makes me think that there is something more in this story ..., i.e. for fulltilt to expel a player and seize 50k without being able to show evidence of EULA violations is irrational.

Ahh, you are backtracking.

I hope that implies that you have seen your mistake.

You now say:

I don't ask full tilt to reveal the blue hat hint (however by this example, which is not what I think full tilt did, is they said "we detected him by his hat, but we won't tell what color his ha was"). So again- I didn't ask fulltilt to reveal their hint of blue hat, I asked them to show the picture with the gun.

Whereas before you said:

Can you tell me how full tilt will hint anyone if they say:
* your timing between mouse clicks is X1 seconds and std is Y1 seconds, while the mean of all players is X2 and the std of their std is Y2. Which makes it very improbable [number how much here] that you are a human.

instead of:
* we caught you by timing tells.

Which, asking as it does for the specific timings they are using, both means and standard deviations, is very much asking the colour of the hat.

And that is what I have been objecting to all along.

If you now accept that they do not need to promulgate the 'colour of the hat', that is good and shows that you have at last grasped the reality of the situation.

The above is something with which I entirely agree.

I think we should have George Bush chime in on this . After all hes good at holding (people) things without giving an explanation, But by now he woulda figured a way to wire tap all the money away anyways. Point is you both have good points there but if the USA can get away with it im sure ft if they wanted to could too. Full tilt could have probably figured a better way to steal silly's $ then freezeing the account. They coulda called AP and asked to borrow their security to do the investigating. I realize no one wants to lose 47k (except jamie gold he just likes to give it away instead) But if the person who lost it gave up. Maybe there is a reason she did so. i do feel for her 47 k is a shock to lose unexpectedly. But know maybe she"ll do what im gonna do go to a brick and mortar casino, that way i kiss my money goodbye.And at least visit it once in awhile.

I'm not backtracking - I asked for std - because they brought the "timing", and for this std is the evidence. If they brough another evidence then I would have discussed on it.

So my point was that std would have been good evidence (as I udnerstood - same think you are asking for too) and additionally I argued that the std is not something that will help in anyway bot developers (as we had a misunderstaning that I ask for the sites to hint botters - I didn't).

Btw, there is no such dramatic cat and mouse game between sites and botters that you describe in your previous posts

I think we started slightly at cross purposes and have dragged things out by fighting rather than arguing the points co-operatively. Naturally I accept (at least) 50% of the blame for that.

I'm not sure how you can be sure that is not the case.

qpw and indiana - this spat is getting a little ridiculous. Both take a breather and agree to disagree.

i think i would want either of them as my lawyer .lol

I have to disagree with you, because we just agreed with qpw ...

It is certainly not true that 'bots don't harm the casino' (approximate quote), as you assert. Bots harm The Game, in general, and if The Game is not healthy, everybody's earn goes down. Including mine. Including yours. Including every reading member of this forum, if you accept as a given that people with enough time on their hands will waste a little of it, frequenting a poker forum, learning about poker, obviously 'thinking' about the game, rather than just being content to show up at a table, and play two cards, sorting them in to 'good' and 'bad' starting hands. No. If you are reading this post, your game, your future, will be affected by these robots

I recommend Malmuth's Poker Essays III. Paraphrased: if the games are run well, tourists will be made to feel welcome, and they will be comfortable sitting down at the table. (The benefit should be obvious). A different point (his, paraphrased): As soon as a cardroom gets a reputation for cheating, either deserved or undeserved, that cardroom will close: nobody wants to go there, anymore. Certainly not the tourists. Not even the medium-skilled regulars.

Who wants to play the game, without the newer, less skilled players? Without the medium skilled regulars? Without the tourists, the 'mediums' will not have as many winning sessions: the 'mediums' will have only the sharks to play poker with. That, as Malmuth points out, won't last for very long, and then it's over. Do even the sharks want to play, when there are only other highly skilled sharks to sit down at the table with? Not so much. I fancy myself a trout, but I need some minnows; I don't want to sit down at the table with a group of sharks. If that's all that's left, how much poker can I play? How many minnows will show up, knowing of their own inexperience, trying to do better, trying to learn, trying to succeed, trying to move up, trying to get that excitement, that only next-higher stakes, and winning, will provide? Now, you, yourself: re-write that sentence. Add, at the end "and knowing that at some, maybe the next, level, a ROBOT will be waiting for you".

The online poker rooms have only a short time to fix this problem, and to fix it right the first time: as soon as Discovery Channel runs a program (over, and over, sheesh) about the M.I.T. Bot-Making Team (and they won't have the founders pictures' shadowed out, will they?) your hobby just took a turn for the worse, and it won't recover, won't ever be the way it was, "back in '07". Heck, as it is, it won't ever be the way it was, back in '05, before the Neteller fiasco, back when everybody who wanted to could load, play, unload, and spend the money the next day: but nobody here will seriously argue that the games are as soft as they used to be, when those adventurers could be found at most every table, at most every stakes. Those adventurers, like those days, are gone forever, and those adventurers weren't even fools. What's a little risky fun, what's wrong with taking a little holdem flyer, on a Friday night? And some beers, around the fraternity communal laptop, piped into the big-screen?

What's left over, the ones who haven't left, are the people who can put up with Epassporte, seven day delays, six hundred dollar limits on transfers, less for newbies, and various other restrictions that cause threads on this forum to multiply, and run on forever.

And we're about to turn those Neteller survivors into fools. Turn them into fools, who watch Discovery Channel (no, dude, they don't play poker anymore: they'd rather watch TV) and see the interview (again...) "Marty, what was your team's big break?" "Well, it was when we realized that we could pressure the poker sites into not impounding our funds, through manipulation of so-called public opinion. We'd even pressured them into discussing their detection techniques, point by point, because, man, we were entitled to a hearing, we were entitled to RESPOND, and if they had to wait for that, we had time to get most of the money off-site. No question, we lost a few funds, not most of the bankroll, but that was the major way that we got through 2008 and 2009, without losing most of our money. Our fourth-generation program, which came along in mid-2009, that was the icing on the cake, man, it was all history from there." (Voice-over: We'll be back, with the M.I.T. Bot-Making Team, right after this.)

You let bots, and bot makers survive, and you have killed your hobby. You have killed your dream of 'improving' your game, and moving up in limits. Do you really want to move up in limits, knowing that at a certain point, you're going to run into a brick bot? I'm sorry, brick wall? At this moment, the online game of heads up limit poker shoud be withdrawn, should be made non-available: that's the bot training ground. There will be other suggestions, some better than that one, to protect online poker. Some of those suggestions should be adopted.

But if you don't protect online poker, and it's integrity, and its fair availability to the masses, you will destroy online poker. The masses won't show up. And I'll tell you this: Chevrolet auto dealers make a lot more money than Ferrari auto dealers do. Think about it.

As far as folks not wanting to play against a robot... I can show you rooms full of Vegas tourists who sit and play slot machines. Against a "robot". Willingly. Despite knowing that the odds are stacked against them. And like any form of gambling, some of them lose and some of them win.

The push against poker bots isn't from the fish who are probably going to lose anyway, and who probably don't see much difference between heads up poker against a bot and video poker (and they'll willingly play that). And in the grand scheme of things, there isn't much difference, is there?

It's not from the casinos/site-operators who are going to get their rake anyway, whether it's from a bot or from a human.

No, the push against poker bots is from the sharks who don't want to give up their current monopoly position. The site operators cater to the sharks because they generate revenue, they keep the tables going, and because they are generally loyal to a particular site. So the sites make rules against bots, not because they think that the fish need protection, but because they want to have a reputation as a shark-friendly site. (The fish don't know how shark-infested the waters are -- that's what makes them fish.)

Think about it as it relates to a B&M Las Vegas casino. A salesman brings in two machines, both look and feel identical, with the same money slots, etc. One plays video blackjack, the other plays heads-up limit poker. The salesman tells the casino that the video blackjack machine should have a 0.4% house edge against perfect play -- but obviously he can't guarantee that the machine will turn a profit over any particular time period. He tells the casino that the heads-up limit poker machine has a 5% rake capped at $3 per hand with a no-flop/no-drop policy. His company is offering to bankroll the bot inside the machine; the casino gets the rake. The casino basically CANNOT lose money if they install this machine -- risk-free 5% rake.

1) Which machine looks more attractive to the casino?

2) Is your typical Vegas tourist going to be upset at having this additional gambling option?

3) Will there be tourists willing to sit down and play against the machine?

4) Who stands to lose the most? Hint: it's the local grinder who is making a living off of the tourists. Some tourists are going to be so afraid of giving off a "tell" that they'd rather play against a computer.



To me, this anti-bot sentiment is just like an auto-workers' union fighting the introduction of robots into the factory. It's about protecting jobs. And there's nothing wrong with that sentiment. But when you start equating poker bots to cheating, you lose my support. A poker bot is no more "cheating" than a video poker machine is -- hell, the poker bot doesn't even necessarily have a long term +EV (against perfect play, it will be -EV); I guarantee you that the video poker machine does.

Sorry, no time - only the first couple of points:

Unless they are cheating... how do they harm the game? just by being bots? do you assume all bots plays perfect winning poker?

Even if they did - so? Are they worse for the game than an expert human? Why?

Do you think seizing funds may give a cardroom a reputation of cheating? When I speak to fish in pubs - most of them say "You actually get the money out? Is the money safe? I think they rig it for you to lose!" Not, "I heard there are very tough players that I heard be bots". Confidence in the ability to cash out your winnings is a HUGE issue for potential fish.

I pretty much disagree on all points here

dave.