It should still be detectable over large samples? Unless the player using RTA adds in enough mistakes as to appear human, but that kinda defeats the purpose of using RTA in the first place. I'm not talking about taking weird lines or whatever, I'm talking about the % of the time a player is taking a -EV line at equilibrium. Someone cheating as you suggest should still appear inhuman statistically. not easy to catch but I guess theoretically possible~?

I'm not trying to obfuscate, I just didn't understand your post. Bear in mind I just browse this thread and there is a lot of stuff. I take it back if you are offended.

Btw with systematic screen scraping (however you do it) there is significant risk of being caught. If undetectable now it doesn't mean site(s) won't catch it tomorrow.

Like I said to be safe you have to be a lonewolf, with good experience of botting and avoiding detection (a lot has changed from 2015 to 2021). This isn't there for almost all actual poker players. Often it's groups working with a developer who may end up going rogue and selling to others etc.

People also quit poker often, and it's these- the semi-retired exit scam trigger happy types that end up botting in my experience. But then by their nature these player(s)/group(s) end up getting caught quickly. Kinda similar set up to pump and dump scams:

look at my winnings with my bot! Now buy it from me pls (since it gets caught after 1 week on Stars now)!

Indeed, most of the bots that are sold and easily found online are straight up scams.

The incentives aren't there yet for RTA users. IMO the actual thread is if the masses are educated on how they never had a chance winning at poker, and poker turns into online backgammon or something.

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as aggressive but I get frustrated that we can't seem to have a grown-up conversation about this topic without what I feel is people trying to hide the reality of the situation. I can see from your posts you are good intentioned but as they say, the road is paved with .....

An external camera that captures the screen to another computer. Everything runs outside of the main device, You have no way of catching this and that is just one idea off the top of my head.

These are all not arguments towards how these guys are going to get caught. These are idiots who got caught because of stupidity. I am not even sure how bots have come into the conversation as the conversation in this thread is around human users using RTA while playing.

I am not even going to address the point that the incentives aren't there as it is a ludicrous statement. The last part gets me quite angry as it suggests sweeping it under the rug and sing a happy song is an answer until it all unravels and who really cares if players are getting cheated and playing in unfair environments as long as the games keep going?

OK at stars bots/RTA were treated the same- i.e. always prohibited. Software which is an AI that gives you advice to confirm has always been defined as "bot" at Stars since 2014 (in emails they will use "PTBB" i.e. "push this button bot").

I'm not going to tell you what we did with external camera/screen capture/HDMI splitters, but we have caught many (obv not all) who used such methods for a while now. Like I said- any set up that is automated has bigger risk of being caught and will leave it at that.

If you are unsatisfied well, sorry to repeat- you are going to always potentially get cheated before they are caught (as you said- no minority report). So yeah it's always unfair lol.

You don't have to trust me obv. I've worked in prob the best team for this stuff. I think the incentives aren't there for most poker players to use RTA (got to say manual lookups in high EV spots have always been ****ed- idk why people play highstakes MTTs). Apart from regs who are quitting the game.

Just to mention as well that from what I have seen most of these programs so far are not that sophisticated when it comes to reading the cards and are using some kind of simple OCR computer vision. It has been a while since I did computer vision in college so there may even be ways these days to display stuff that is unreadable although I doubt it. Something easy the poker sites could do is change these up in some way to make them harder to read continually so the programs have to be updated. The only reason I can think the sites haven't already done this already is that they don't want to spook the playing base. Keep the show on the road

can we stop this nonsense rta talk when the games have rake and casuals, please....unless ur playing ultra high stakes there is no way its ever +ev with the high rake already in play and with v dynamic ranges since a casual is in the game. ye one might think to use it here and there but than u add in the risk of getting caught which losses u massively in ev for squeezing just a bit more ev in short run would never be worth it.

if u wanna be worried about something be worried about massive datatbase hh analysis put into a leak finder program, pretty sure thats how a lot of high stakes players got rich. especially since it was kinda grey area no one talked about it. this rta nonsense seems like a little baby compared with that lol

I am not going to say anymore in this thread but you are very wrong on this and there are currently sites and discord groups full of people buying and using this stuff.

Idk about other sites, but if they use it on Stars very quickly the product turns into a pump and dump.

The more they use it the faster it gets caught, if it's not already being caught. That's the whole point. The tool sellers don't have the same incentives as the players who want to buy such tools.

You know I'd love to buy it and use it for a couple of weeks on stars. Lets see how quickly you catch me? Care for a wager?

I really do hope as you say things get found out very quickly but as I said I think if you are smart and only using it as a guide. I just find it next to impossible to fathom how you get caught. You obviously know much more having worked in the area so I will bow to your greater wisdom.

I do still think a much more radical approach needs to be taken if you want to ensure the game can still be playeded online in years to come than what is currently being done.

Yes incentives for getting these tools are absolutely terrible for most regs.

As player the bolded part is personally the reason I wouldn't want to play on Stars vs GG.
I'm a winning reg, playing casually, not playing highstakes. So not at risk from sophisticated RTA, or random confiscation from unknown (at least to me) game integrity measures.

However on stars with hhs and databases etc I'm actually playing at a big disadvantage since I don't have time to do all of that analysis and HUD study or join in huge groups of motivated regs/stables.

I'm no longer working there lol.

This is also an impossible wager since you have freedom to choose which gametypes and volume to play, and no way for me to verify anything.

Good chatting with you. Thanks for taking the time to answer some of the questions and sorry if I was a bit short at times.

No worries- please don't buy a bot (RTA) for your own sake!

I am a Software Dev so I was more interested to see what people have put together from a technical point of view. I do fully believe if I was wanted there is almost zero chance it would get flagged but I don't have the incentive to be bothered trying considering I don't play a great deal of online poker these days apart from donking around in large field MTT's.

cant they buy hh on gg also?

This reminds me of the P versus NP problem but maybe I'm off-base here.

From Wikipedia

"The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in computer science. It asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified can also be solved quickly"

The reason I say that is because I think to detect cheating with RTA the site operators would have to know the complete GTO strategy not only for the full game but also for all simplified games that players are simulating, which is computationally impossible. And only with that data could we even start to think about how to apply rules based on the data.

I think detection for cheating in a game this complex is impossible unless you make major simplifications that come with huge risks.

@Pajama it's not true because simplifications aren't going to make blunders into winning plays and vice versa.

Changing betting structure with good preflop ranges is still going to result in similiar EV outputs, a site just needs a database with a reasonable number of sizings and then software to 'round to the nearest line'/ 'remove hands with recreationals' and they will be able to get a good idea of what kind of EV mistakes players are making.

Not entirely sure how much such software would cost to develop with a full gametree at a few stack depths, but would definitely take the under on $1mil, probably under on 500k.*

* talking for a western company that has certain procedures it has to follow, generally not access to actual cheapest software development given it has to link with proprietary software
** am very sure it already exists in some form on a few sites
*** although I really don't like the way the software was put together for studying/ the owners seemingly laisse faire attitude to RTA, this is kind of just what GTOWizard does, which shows it's easily developable

You won't know how they detected you. And would burn through multiple accounts to get some to work, just to be detected again and again.

For you to get caught it only takes one mistake, one irregularity to be detected, and they won't tell you the reason you got banned. Also, you might be winning and be thinking it works but the real verification always comes during withdrawal, which increases the development cycle.

You won't know how they detected you. And would burn through multiple accounts to get some to work, just to be detected again and again.

For you to get caught it only takes one mistake, one irregularity to be detected, and they won't tell you the reason you got banned. Also, you might be winning and be thinking it works but the real verification always comes during withdrawal, which increases the development cycle.

Yep. They don't outright sell it as an rta tool but looking through their discord chat with prospective customers their main selling point on what makes it better or different than the competition is that they haven't embed anti rta mechanisms into the tool.

They even go on to insist that their customers run the tool on a separate machine than they play poker on, "just to be safe", with many of them not understanding why that is necessary, etc. Just want to use it to study ,etc.

If you want to avoid cheating don't play online in any capacity. Otherwise you'll likely be getting cheated in some shape or form.

At least you gave me a good laugh with that post. Games are BETTER than 2015. Like are you alright in the head? I have been playing online since 2006/7 odd. This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen posted here. Sell me this pencil?

You know telling people the truth and being what seems a trustworthy person goes a long way in business and I currently use one of your competitor's products to study where I considered moving to your product. Given your posts in this thread, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Yeah, one of the most useful aspects of the new solvers is being able to pick spots and practice them over and over drilling situations. It is another aspect that is infuriating towards the people cheating in that if they have RTA running they are essentially getting good while playing. Can you imagine playing in games day in and day out with a solver running beside you telling you what the correct play is all the time? You would get very good just through repetition very quickly. There is a thread here recently about a guy who is a known RTA'er online who won a super high roller bowl in the last few weeks proving the point. They can basically use online as a training ground.

One idea to postpone the inevitable for quite a bit is to change the game structure to have more multiway pots postflop.
You can make it limit (or something similar) preflop and NL postflop or you can make it pot-limit preflop and cap the number of bets at 3 (so you can raise and 3bet but can't 4bet preflop). The latter will likely not be enough for Holdem though.

The thing is that multiway poker is not solvable. Equilibrium points still exist but they don't guarantee you do well by following the strategy unlike HU. 3+way poker has psychology built in - people can hurt you and themselves while rewarding others by their plays. I am sure computers can still beat humans at that game sooner or later but at least it requires some other techniques than just solving spots with reasonable bet sizes. There is also way more way bigger spots to solve, especially if you can get 4+player pots on regular basis.

The problem with the modern 6max game is that it mainly plays like HU. Instead of 3 spots in HU (SRP, 3bet pot, 4bet pot) you get maybe 20-30 reasonably common ones and that is just too easy for modern tools.

the solution if rta is ever a problem which i dont think it is because of the casuals(and yes if ur playing poker vs regulars u are more at risk from colussion, hh mining it was always like this since 2008 isildur got cheated of millions with hh mining sharing etc heck a lot of high stakes players got rich like this lets not bet naive ) is adding random cash drops to the pot at random streets, reduce rake also so the game rake stay the same.