time limits per day could be the worst idea i've ever heard.

It still doesn't fight the problem of bots, just limits how much they could potentially make in one day.

That's not true. To be completely unexploitable you would need to solve poker. That's a long distance away.

I am someone who studies AI. I don't really understand the hatred for bots. Why would the site owners even care if bots were playing? To them they're just another source of income - they want the bots there. It seems that most people who dislike them only want them gone because they can't beat them.

Frankly, it's inevitable that poker will be overrun by bots. It will become very difficult to beat them. Online poker will be much like online chess. Bot vs bot.

I like programming, I like poker and I like AI so it's pretty likely that one day I'll start work on one. Oh teh noes, I'd be making online poker harder! With that logic, why not also ban players from reading poker books? They also make it harder for you to beat the games.

what isn't true?

it's not inevitable that online poker will be overrun by bots, this is a myth that some people seem to want to spread. players need to stand up for themselves and force sites to do something.

i'll be sending more emails and i urge everyone else to do the same.

Cliffs: You don't care about the implications on the game. Sure they may just be one more source of income for the site, but when they drive away ultimately all of the player base as they would in your scenario, the site has no money.

So stupid. You want to do nothing about what would be effectively the destruction of online poker just because you like bots.

Oh and bots will not be able to beaten by people and your accelerating the process by condoning it.

^Don't feed the troll imo, this should be an action thread, the debate's been done before

+1

IMO this is similar to The Olympics ruling out performance enhancing drugs - most see the sense but there are a fair few thinking that allowing any drugs would be good for a laugh

If you want to use bots, why not have a site solely for bots?

And let's have a seperate 100m for the boys (and girls) on roids....wiiiii

Lol ive recently played some $2 and 5$ double or nothings on a certain merge site and it was completly absurd how tight the play was over a couple of hours.I mean at one time these stakes were "donk it off baby heaven"..Now?I dunno

Great OP, will definitely help where I can.

Wrong imo!

There are only four ways I think where a winning player is good for a site:

1) they entertain the losing players via chat, encouraging them to stay and lose more

2) they provide action for fish whereby if they weren't playing, the fish would log off and not lose money (which would in effect is split between the player's winnings and the site's rake). This is not the case in the top ~10 poker networks where they are plenty of games running almost 24/7.

3) they can go on to become some sort of superstar and attract new losing players to the site, or they'll tell their fishy friends 'hey i won xxx playing poker, you should come play too'

4) they may end out going on tilt one day and become a net losing player, or degen it at the side games etc

Bots do none of these, the rake they generate worthless if the same rake would have been taken regardless had the bots not have been playing, thus bots are only of use in the very small networks to get games running.

Instead, they are taking money from real players, both from net winning players who could do any of the 4 above, and from net losing players, who would otherwise keep playing with their winnings and be raked more, making the site more money (whereas the bot will withdraw the money).

There is also the issue of negative publicly, if it became a mainstream issue then this would turn off a lot of recreational/losing players.

So imo this is a serious matter for the larger sites/networks! I really hope they take this matter seriously, it's win-win for players and themselves if they do.

Part of me is tempted to do some sort of undercover work and infiltrate the bots network, but not sure if I can pull of enough of a James Bond

all imo!

john

I realize this wouldn't stop bots long term but am curious what the effects would be if the best players in the world sauce, islidur, ivey, durrr etc went bot hunting, i.e try to run down all the bots. After thinking about this for about 5 minutes im not so sure the effects would be positive like maybe this would help the bots have better hand histories to look at and or just sit out and became bumhunting bots. Regardless I still think it would be a fun spectacle.

Time limits for a recreational player is no big deal. You could even get creative as far as how to do the limit so it never affects a recreational player, for example, so many hours per week.

As far as it not fighting the problem of the bots, anything you can do to limit the bots, combined with a very strong verification process will have a negative impact on the bots. There is no single solution, but a combination of certain checks and restrictions would make it very tough for bots.

Even if you just cut the presence of bots dramatically, without completely removing them, I hardly see how it is a bad thing. For example, let's say right now there are 20,000 bot hours per week on Stars, if you implement checks and verifications you may not remove bots completely, but if you cut those bot hours down to less than 3,000 bot hours per week, that is still a major improvement.

Someone with more technical insight could come up with better solutions.

I dont think sites other than Pokerstars care that much about bots tbh. The smaller networks are seeing their cash cows destroyed by government legislation from various countries i.e players being ring fenced, that they don't mind hundreds of bots playing 24/7 vs each other because of the rake they generate.

Also I know for certain that the Microgaming network have had their own house bots operating for at least 5 years. So if Microgaming have had their owns bots for at least 5 years, then obv ipoker/ongame must have some as well.

On PokerAI's site there's a survey asking what the botters' occupation is. First is Student, obviously. The last one at 7% is... Poker Site Employee.

the truth is, there really no 100% efficient method for detecting bots and there will never be.

There will never be a way for a site to be 100% bot-free but that doesnt mean players and pokersites should do nothing to stop them. Just like any crime or scamming, the effort to curb the practice is the key to containing the threat.

Op maybe add bodog email to first post. I can tell you first-hand they have problems in the micro cash and sngs.

Thx for everyones efforts in this. Whether you play nosebleeds or micros, can beat bots or not, they affect your bottomline one way or another.

Like doping in sports. You have to go after it anyway.

Poor bots, noone to stick up for them....

Sending the emails now. People don't seem to understand how dangerous this really is. These things will evolve and the people creating them will become greedier.

It is also naive to say there is no way to combat bots. Just because we don't have a clear cut solution to it doesn't mean there isn't one or one can't be developed.

I used to play on 888 but not anymore. I was playing nl30 HU and noticed bots a cpl of months ago.

There was a thread made about them, just wondering if those usernames were the ones that got busted, heres a link to the thread

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...-30nl-1094621/

i was also wondering if there is any more detail on this article, pretty sure i lost a 100 bucks or so off them

http://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-room...-detected-888/

i think saying bots have won 1-2 million in the last year is a huge underestimate. id say bots easily have won over 10 million in the last year if u include all network/stakes.

I have recently made an effort to become more regular at online poker by putting in more hours / playing more tables.

I am somewhat shocked that this is such a big issue. And it concerns me that something that I got into to make some money is being run by machines, which obviously have huge advantages.

Thinking back, I have my suspicions of certain players whom I play against regularly might in fact be bots.

Might be a stupid suggestion, but can we not start by making a list of players who might be bots.

Essentially everyone sends in a list of players who they suspect to be bots, for various reasons. Then you create a master list by taking the most common names from all the lists (fifty, for example). Then we forward this to pokerstars (and the other sites) for them to investigate these particular players.

Might be a good start and if the sites get enough emails, they might consider it, if they think it can be bad publicity for them.

Any suggestions / comments?

I play micros on Bodog. Given the four table limit, no rb and relatively low number of SNG/MTTs going off at that level, I haven't really considered Bodog as being bot friendly. PM me with screennames if you want. I'm no better at spotting bots than the next guy, but I'll be happy to have a look.

Small time rec player here (not anymore, U.S.) and I have a question:

Why do you ppl continue playing if you think you're up against nearly unbeatable bots for which you even have graphs showing how much they are taking you for?

btw: If you can organize a boycott of the sites somehow until they clean up the problem that would be effective, imo, and you should let the sites know you're doing it. Maybe do what the French did and fill the tables and not play.

For serious cheating of any sort, not just botting. Industry blacklists seem great. There are so many sites/networks they can just hop around. That said it would needed to be saved for serious offenses to ensure nobody was accidentally caught in the world wide ban net.

Im for anything reasonable that helps online poker be safe and fair. Ill prob make the list tho which is kinda annoying. Im not a witch either.

Wouldnt the random verification pop ups idea be pretty effective? seems to me that would go a long way.

How much power does the poker community have in getting sites to incorporate stuff like this?

I've already sent my letter.

But to those who are scared that the bots one day might beat humans, well it's not possible in the near future. This situation isn't comparable to the chess situations, which by the way, isn't yet solved completely, they've solved somewhere around 13 pieces or smth, but not the complete game.

Poker is a game of incomplete information and adaption, and as long as the AI isn't nearing human intellect and surpasses it, it won't beat the best human players. It does have some other very important benefits, it doesn't tilt and it doesn't gamble.

This issue needs to be solved correctly.

1. Any method of solving cannot include fish. This means that we cannot start asking for identification for all players, the webcam idea is bad since not everyone has a webcam.

2. The sites need to get in on the bot software and start adjusting their software/changing it frequently so that the public does not have their hands on a profitable bot. However, notice that you can never stop a single person who develops bots and isnt giving it out to the public, you just can't.

3. The sites need to start gathering identification, regular checks by messaging in-game, association pattern discovery of bots from players who fits the role of a botter: winning, multitabling, never tilts, never gambles, same play, no deviation etc.