Who cares if the AI can't beat regulars. It can beat fish which is enough to suck the last blood out of the poker economy

qft. this is (one of if not the) worst part about bots imo.

^Bingo, no need for the pseudo-intellectual 'game of incomplete info' BS we all know.

Was pretty clear what the OP meant by 'bot's will be unexploitable by anyone in the game' - no one wants to have to break out a GTO neural net when they sit down, we'd simply prefer opponents that have emotion, humanity, tilt, etc., to keep the games fun and profitable.

blacklisting could never happen for various reasons imo, but it would be good if more sites/players took this stuff seriously.

No offence old beans but what is the point of writing a strongly worded email to say Ipoker about poker bots playing on the Ipoker network? When titan + william hill already advertise themselves on a site that already promotes poker bots?

I thought william hill and titan own the Ipoker network between them or are owned by the network group?

I guess they may give themselves five of the best, no tea, early to bed then tomorrow count all the extra rake and liquidity that has come in from those bots.

Not everyone knows it and there are some players who just started of at microstakes and if they think that the bot are able to outsmart them no matter how much work they put in, well then what's the point. This might lead them to quit early.
So I think it's important to know how the bots functions, what their limitations are and so on. The more people know about the bots, the more they can prevent from getting exploited by them and come up with solutions to how to fight them.
Beside, there isn't a GTO and never will be for certain stacksizes and games.

I'm a complete tech noob so apologies if my idea is absurd but there must be a way to create a kind of software that monitors all accounts on a certain site. the accounts that show bot tendencies (mass multitabling for long hours with near perfect graphs) can then be the target of further investigation by the site or group that does this.

This way no restrictions are implemented that could scare of fish.

I got an extensive reply from Pokerstars. I think they raise a very good point about not sharing players' info with other sites since it would break their player privacy terms. I would love to see a change in those terms where if you are confirmed as being a bot(ter) your account info is now fair game and can be shared to all other poker sites. I still think the creation of an anti-bot committee to share technical information about how the bots operate and how to counter them would be very beneficial. This committee could operate without breaking anyone's privacy if you drop the idea of a black list.

It is up to us to keep a "bot list" and make it as visible to the poker masses as possible... but then it might prove to be very bad for some legit players. How do you prove someone is a bot 100%? I'll leave that to the really smart people out there.

"Hello Pascal,

Thank you for your email. Your email was escalated to me as a member of the dedicated PokerStars bot hunting team.

PokerStars is aware of recent discussions of bots on various online poker forums, and we agree that they are a serious challenge to online poker operators.

We recognise that these recent discussions have arisen as a result of allegations at other online poker sites. Such specific issues are a matter for those other sites, and PokerStars has no comment on those specific incidents.

Instead, let us again confirm that the use of automated players (bots) is not tolerated at PokerStars. We prohibit such activity because we believe poker is a game that must be played by humans – humans making decisions, in a battle against other humans.

Players on PokerStars do not have access to reliable information regarding the way their opponents input their actions but rather, just their betting patterns and a limited amount of information on how fast they act (and even that is subject to variance as a result of internet lag). By contrast, PokerStars operates a database that contains a great deal of information purpose-built to determine whether an account is being operated by a human or not. This database does include detailed analysis of how players interact with the PokerStars software on a fundamental technical level. We use our experience in this area to profile various users, and to then make an informed judgement on whether they are using prohibited software.

For example, we can tell when and how players use a mouse, keyboard or some other input device. These are just some of the measures we look out for – we have many different tools which we keep secret because we do not wish our methods to fall into the hands of bot programmers who will then use that information to avoid detection in the future.

Further, we note that your email raised the possibility of PokerStars educating our competitors on bot detection. While we appreciate your point of view on this matter, we can confirm that information about player activity at PokerStars is protected as a result of the strict player privacy protection regulations that we operate under. As you would expect, we abide by the regulatory regime that applies to PokerStars in the various jurisdictions in which we operate.

PokerStars will continue working hard to combat the challenge of poker bots. If there is a particular PokerStars account that you believe might be a bot, then we encourage you to send further details at your convenience. In the meantime, we will continue to work proactively to identify and take appropriate action against those that seek to break our rules on this important issue.

Regards,

Michael J
PokerStars Game Security Team"

There's a lot of bad information going around so I wanna clear a few things up. I also feel bots are easily the biggest thread to online poker right now but I think SM sort of misrepresented a few things:

The bots are not even close to being unexploitable, and this won't happen for a while. I'm up at 5/10 against all suspected bots I've played against but here's the thing: IT DOESNT MATTER.

These bots are playing 24/7 and are taking MILLIONS out of our economy. Whether or not you are better than these bots doesn't matter, because in games that are already tough this much money being siphoned out is just a disaster. Once they dry out the MSNL+ economy, they will move to SSNL and finally uNL until there is nothing left. That makes this:

One of the stupidest posts ever. These bots are bad for every single online player, and considering that these bots are beating 5/10 there's a pretty good chance they'd beat you too (cbf to check your posting history).

Anyway this is a VERY serious issue, and every online player should be concerned with it. Thank you SM for making this thread, I have been sending emails almost every day and I hope everyone does the same.

Suggestion (1)
What about a system along the following lines?...

- The industry sets up an independent body which is funded by the sites (but not affiliated with any of them).
- Any site which believes a player is using bots/multiaccounting/colluding/cheating etc refers the player's details to the anti-cheating body
- Periodically sites screen their player lists through the anti-cheating body
- The site is informed of any suspected cheaters on its list and the details of what they have done so they can monitor or take action accordingly
- Confirmed cheaters are put on a blacklist which prevents them opening accounts
- All poker sites incorporate into their T&C that anyone suspected of cheating will have their details passed to the anti-cheating body which other sites may use for screening.

Suggestion (2)
Don't put any restrictions on new players but if monitoring suggests a player may be using a bot etc then apply limitations (number of tables, hands per day, captchas, etc).

Suggestion (3)
Require a deposit from each player (linked to volume/stakes played etc). The deposit can not be used to play and can only be recovered when the account is closed (or moves down volume/stakes for a period). If the player is found to be cheated then this can be confiscated (and paid to victims). The factors which are linked to botting (eg many tables, long hours) should require larger deposits.

Suggestion (4)
(As a deterrent) Be more ruthless with those that are found cheating. Why is nobody prosecuted for fraud?

Suggestion (5)
Implement a withdrawal delay for profits above a certain level so that cheaters always have more at risk of confiscation if found out.

Suggestion (6)
Include a player confidentiality exclusion in the T&C such that the site can publish the details of players terminated for cheating.

the problem is not detecting bots where they play but where they are trained/tested and where are they tested?
on play money tables
on FT when the draw games were added there where according to me at least 6 bots tested and 2 pairs of colluding bots tested
poker rooms make mistakes by not chasing them and "killing" them when they are still "young"
sorry fo the murdering analogies

i emailed a bunch of sites i don't have accounts with, explaining i was unhappy to join their sites until they address the bot problem properly. i quoted this thread in my email, hope this helps

Unfortunately some sites use bots to generate action..

Very good poast.

By the way, even if bots were not beating SSNL/MSNL (even though they ARE), the fact that they can (and do) crush the micros is a serious threat.

The credit for the theory goes to jamsym1 who posted this in MSNL : (I'm paraphrasing)

Poker works like a pyramid. There is 1000 fish that deposit 50$ and play NL25. 100 of those fish spin it up to 500$ and then play NL200, 10 of those fish spin it up to 5k and play NL2k. So on and so forth...

If bots are killing the fish at NL10, then there is way less fish moving up to higher stakes to feed the sharks there.

Ongame and iPoker deny this, obviously. In the end, it's up to the players to just STOP PLAYING ON THOSE NETWORKS COMPLETELY. I personally took my money out of ongame last week because of this. It's the best way to get poker sites to get things done.

e-mail send to Ipoker.

But they admit using bots to generate action right?
So not sure if my e-mail will be answered at all.

I do not think they admit to it, they give themselves the right to use bots on certain casino games, so you can play someone, even if it is a bot.

I think one of the issues with Ipoker is that sites like titan and will hill have banners on at least one poker site where you can link to or download bot software. From what I understand and have read on another site that is looking into the issue of bots on Ipoker, it seems that titan and will hill basically control or own Ipoker. This is perhaps the most worrying thing of all. If they are happy to have their banners on a bot site then they in public are saying bots are ok?

So sending an email to Ipoker about bots on the network when the own a site that advertises on a bot site may get a response but not the real action you want.

Agreed sir.

This thread has nothing to do with preventing online poker to die, this is only about regs trying to secure there income. Instead that some bot owner takes the money out, the regs do it, I don't see the difference regarding the future of online poker.

I don't think one thing excludes the other, since the addition of bots certainly speeds up the process - plus it is cheating.

And just to make matters worse i think multitabling good but not great human players already use ( or are tempted to use) the bots program as a help that they just use in some situations. That would really be impossible to detect and make the HUD:s are cheating debate ridiculous in comparison.

you are obviously insane

hes not insane, just an epic ******.

an epic NVGtard fwiw

The arguments that less fish can move up in stakes to donate to the regs there makes no sense cause bots have been there for many years and no one ever cared.

Now that the bots become capable of beating midstakes people start to care all of a sudden, why? Cause they are touching the direct profit from regs, and hell some bad regs might even lose vs these bots. So don't come up with bull**** that online poker is dieing cause of these bots cause if that would be the case online poker would be dead already.

Who cares if NL400+ stakes die? 99% of the players play a lot lower.

Besides online poker is rigged enough to give fish the chance to move up lol.

Bots can read or bypass those.