in addition to the catch rate of the cheaters another factor is the prevention rate. so even if a solution has a 50% catch rate it could still yield a better outcome than that because it would stop people attempting to cheat (because they know there is a 50% chance of being caught).

other thoughts to help prevention:
-harsh punishment for cheaters
-sites actually announce their zero tolerance policy and keep on-going good communication about their stance on it (not sweep it under the rug).

One of the ways I was thinking which is a technically complex solution but it would extend outside poker. You have some kind of smart glasses from which the cards are decrypted when you are looking through them. If you don't have them on you can't see the boards on the site. Add some features such as sound and sight monitoring available to the site when you use the glasses through them and you have some good protection. The sites could give these glasses away to customers when they sign up.

Pokerstars already has a huge poker VR platform on the Oculus which is only for play money at the moment but which is very impressive and I am sure this kind of thing is in there thinking down the road. They can montior everything someone is doing in the VR space and make cheating very, very hard. Wider adoption though of VR is needed for it to gain traction.

The middle ground of some kind of smart glasses makes more sense at the moment imo.

wont stop people using RTA,but anyone caught cheating should be banned from all online poker sites worldwide,would be easy enough for sites to share data about cheats,like a lot of live casinos do.

Very interesting thread - thanks OP.

It's mostly all been said, and I agree with those who are basically saying that it is a losing battle. Solutions that make the game harder by varying it or reducing time are playing into the hands of skilled cheaters, because software will always outperform people at these tasks.

Likewise the camera ideas etc are just hurdles to be overcome - none of them will defeat a determined techie.

I think RTA is more common than people expect. I am in the habit of looking at Official Poker Rankings, and a profile that I have noticed becoming hugely common in the last couple of years are "new" players who arrive on the scene (or the site) with almost perfect statistics from day one. I used to assume that they were established pros opening new accounts to defeat huds, but I now think it likely that many are new accounts for RTA-based players (or bots).

Dumb question, but surely this just plays exactly the same postflop, where the real money in a hand is made?

Of course, the solution is for everyone to stop playing games that are solved

Postflop you’d be playing vs different ranges so it would not play exactly the same. It would be impossible to have a large library of simulations to refer to if the blinds/antes were varied enough.

I'm a big fan of his channel and I agree that obviously RTA poses a massive existential threat to online poker, but I think the solution he proposes is ridiculous.

Going the way of online schooling by having cameras and mirrors and making people show off their bedroom/house is ridiculously intrusive, time excessing and going to scarce off anyone who isn't making a living with poker.

I think the solution is for sites to have some combination of comparing players play against GTO/solver/neural network outputs postflop, and monitoring mouse movements and computer/program activity to detect postflop.

Propsed intrusive solutions should only be taken on suspicious Accounts as last resort.

Unless you have huge variance in the size to the point where they're large enough in relation to stacks where the regs start crying that it's short stack poker, I don't think any sort of ranges would differ by much of anything to seriously affect post play

Why would any players besides players who are suspicious or consistently crushing over large samples ever have to be subjected to the invasive measures?

I think the majority of legit regs who care about the long-term health of the games would be OK with a little bit of an extra hassle to play in clean games and continue making the money that they do.

A high stakes reg I spoke to said they'd wear a site issued butt plug during their grind sessions if it was effective enough in ensuring that nobody was cheating.

If you believe the bolded to be true I’d suggest you take a look at the difference between preflop strategies with 2 and 3 blinds and with/without one size ante. These are minor changes that have a major impact.

If you are a winner in the game you are subject to playing under the conditions outlined in that video. If you don't want to do that then good luck you don't get to play here anymore. The ecology of the site is improved as you have removed a winning player so it is a win/win for the poker site either way. I am not sure how sites aren't clamoring to introduce this as it benefits them but also it means winning players who aren't cheating have a solid defense so they should also be pushing for the same.

I am interested in the people who keep saying this wouldn't change things and the cheaters could easily circumvent such as system. If you have a 360 live feed of the players you can easily use AI to cross-reference the video against playing movements on the site. It would be incredibly hard to cheat the system given you are doing things on the poker site that can be crossed checked on the video with timestamps on both.

In the distant future, headsets and holographic poker is the solution.
Like to invest in the company that puts together holograms / virtual reality
and blockchain to secure user identification and transaction, a necessary step
to prevent bots. Add immersive wearable knick nacks and you have tells
VC venture capitalist contact 1 800 .....

It isn't really a distant future if you have playedd PokerStars VR on the Oculus. I think though mass buy-in is a way off.

I wonder how far PokerStars are from hosting a real money tournament in VR. I would certainly love to give it a go.

It should also be noted that these VR headsets have cameras that monitor your entire environment for the purposes of tracking movement. So they would have the full mapping of the room in which you are playing and everything in it. They can monitor a full 360 of the outside space and have full monitoring of everything done within the headset. Oculus is also now requiring you to link the headset to a real Facebook account to use it. Given the sales, it appears people have no problem giving up privacy.

1. Data anonymization.
2. Kaggle competition.
3. Profit.

few things firstly as I think has already been said I dont think casual players would be happy with a 3d camera on them at all times when they are playing.

here in the Uk they are talking about strict affordability checks for everyone, and a lot of people feel it would be intrusive to have to provide bank statements to the sites or private financial details. How would these people would then feel about 3d filming of every poker session? further to that such a set up is expensive and it would cost too much for the average casual player to afford.

at low stakes cheating like this appears to me to make little sense, I mean in order to make anything decent your playing multiple tables at a time I fluctuate between 6 and 14 but tend to aim for 10-12.

Firstly how am I ever going to use GTO solutions in time for every table in every spot? such a set up may be possible but I cant see it been viable. and even if I did manage such a set up is it really ideal? I notice huge leaks in vilans play which I think GTO would still beat I believe there could me more exploitable plays.

For small stakes heads up hypers for example I noticed a few players who will always call of an all in if they raised pre from the sb. against this opponent a re raise or shove with a bluffing hand is a huge mistake. However with AA or KK I should just open shove I am pretty sure this is not GTO and against a good player would be very exploitable. Basically only shoving good hands etc, allows them to get away more then they should.

conversely I find some players who will raise and re raise with near 100% against any sb play in these games. the gto solution of min raising say J5 suited more then half the time seems like suicide with this person. Depending on their adaptability or lack of some form of mixed strategy may still be viable with a much higher tendency skewed to raising good hands then bluffs or weak polarised range. However I think and I may be wrong, against such an opponent a 100% limping strategy has always served me well. I dont claim to be good I am profitable at low stakes though.

for me I make slightly more then low wages when playing poker so I am likely terrible compared to the average standard on this site and quite possibly could be provoking many facepalms in my strategy ideas.

But I do make decent rois for low stakes and I am not sure if GTO RTA would yield better results or not. It just seems like a huge amount of effort to go to, for a very marginal if any increase in roi and seems very inpractical. As stakes get higher though players wont have such exploitable leaks as often and GTO will give more of an edge then playing without and trying exploitable plays I think. Perhaps We should have rules for high stake games but not for lower stake games?

or another idea may be if someone is significantly closer to GTO then the vast majority of the player pool they can be interviewed by the poker sites in question and assessed to see if they have actually learned this/understand this or if they are likely cheating.

btw I paid for my gto pre flop charts for heads up hypers I cant afford a solver yet. I will be getting one shortly though with next cash outs. I think its good for moving up stakes or memorising for regs when I play regs but against fish it seems a waste of time. Just disclaimer I am not 100% sure j5 suited is a min raise at 25bb more then 50% of the time but if my charts are correct and not a rip off then that is correct.

Greetings, I am Justin and I thought it necessary to speak on the topic of "Real Time Assistance", and if there is ways internet poker websites are able to prevent this.

If you are unaware of what a real time solver does, it can be one of two things from what I understand... It can either give you a quick calculated estimate of GTO play, which as computers get faster becomes more and more a problem. Another option is people likely can create servers which have many things pre-solved, which takes much time but of course when playing for money people will go to any extend, and then people can sell access to the cheat which can further the problem.

Those who use real time solvers with precaution(as to be unseen by the PC itself) can do things like having a camera pointing at their screen connected to another PC, this camera would then scan the action and bring them an answer of what to do through the other PC. Maybe could also be done by using a virtual machine running windows where your poker program is and having the cheat outside of it. This is not human play of course, and it is just plain cheating.

Just one example, but people ought start talking because there is likely more than you think: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...l+time+solvers

Now Let me give you some thought first before you say within yourself that there is no way to prevent it. Coming from some background in chess as well, one thing you can notice from chess websites like chess.com is that it has legitimate players playing at the top of the board. It in fact doesn't take them very long in most cases to catch someone as a cheater... They have ai that can some how detect suspicious play. Whether it is a bot or real time assistance, the cheater can be assured that if he continues play like that he will get banned. In fact often within the case of less than 10 games of a cheater attempting to come off as not a cheater can get banned as one. Now in chess, you can easily just create another account and it means nothing... But when money is on the line, and the problem of having to have identification things become much more fragile to one bust.

Here's my thoughts, I think if people want an honest playing field somehow if there is any of these poker websites that genuinely have any care for fair play... I do believe that some how there is a way to have ai that detects what is too "ai". As far as I understand GGPoker is already doing this, unfortunately I live in the US, and also unfortunately is chances are they will not say much more about this. Being they indicated that it is intended not to at the bottom of their page on Real Time assistance it with "Please note that we do not intend on releasing detailed investigation reports going forward unless circumstances drastically change and it is warranted." Which likely is simply due to the fact that they have no reason to publish real dangers when many people may just gamble, but I do hope to believe they truly do have working ideas on dedication.

https://en.ggpoker.com/blog/news-hea...e-against-rta/

Discuss!

lol @ the idea GG is actually doing this.

I agree though with your assessment that it should be a tool in the arsenal of sites trying to catch people. It has been mentioned numerous times in this and in other threads already.

The issue is that unlike Chess GTO lines in poker can be deviated from quite a ways with only slight losses in EV. Most clever people using this type of method are likely using the solver as a guide and then playing a style that deviates for exploitative purposes and to avoid detection. They just have it running so they are always aware of what the correct thing is they should be doing. It will catch the guys who don't have much high-level poker knowledge and are just following the solutions religiously but it isn't even close to being a solution to the problem.

Build an opt-in system for winning players. The player agrees to play with a 360 camera setup, in return, they get a few % extra RB and a "verified" tag for everyone to see at the table. This would make honest players more desirable to play against amongst regs, and it would also remove the privacy violation concerns since it's optional, and at the same time, raise big red flags on winning accounts that don't choose to comply in exchange for RB. (Could also remove RB completely for everyone that doesn't comply, although this would hurt recs so not optimal, imo.)

The system doesn't have to record much at all, just random parts of each session, with the option to increase the amount of footage if suspicions arise.

To make this system close to bulletproof each opted-in player would get the ability to vote out none verified players from the table.

The opted-in players would be incentivized to vote out stronger players, giving the none-opted-in winners the choice between getting way less action or get verified and play freely.


Obv the second part of this would be a big ask, but the first part alone would be a huge step in the right direction. It would still require a big investment from the operator, but it is the only way of bringing trust and joy back to online poker, imo.

What you mean you dont enjoy playing against smelly people that constantly hollywood and take 5 minutes to make even the most basic decision or having to play against 3+ people every time you see a flop. Don't forget the constant chip shuffling and not to mention being guilted into paying the dealers salary. Oh and the astronomically high rake As well as the angle shooters. Why wouldn't you want to play in that environment

TLDR

Most live players are smelly hollywooding angle shooting *******s

seems like over kill to me but im sure the donks would love it

This. I hate it when those eastern europeans are taking 10-15 seconds per preflop decision when it gets to the late stages of tournaments and sit and gos. You just know they using some sort of real time assistance to make their decisions.

Stop playing holdem/PLO and move to games that are more difficult to solve/implement a solution in real time. If the people want new games then the sites will add them as well.

NL Holdem is about at the point where limit Holdem was ~15 years ago. The correct decisions are pretty much solved and the best players are able to most accurately replicate the solvers. Limit Holdem is basically a dead game now, save for the occasionally live game at a casino. NL Holdem will soon be a dead game as well, at least with cash games.

Draw games have very little shared info. Only the # of cards each opponent draws each round.

2-7 Single Draw No Limit could be the new Cadillac of poker. All about feel and reading your opponent. Theres some strategy as far as what to draw to and snowing but nowhere close to where we are with Holdem theory.

Stud games have more shared info but its so much that it will be more difficult to implement. Each player in the pot adds so much complexity since each board is independent.