LMAO.

Not sure if serious.

This sounds like conspiracy but im sure many regs having same feelings playing on GG including myself we can’t prove or anything but something pull us back idk what

The stock market is entirely different unless the bots are trading on inside information too.

You have misrepresented the service that Deeplay provides. They offer bots on an adjusted skill level. If a site is using these kind of services they can manipulate the games based on bots they are deploying. They don't need to cheat in other ways and already have full control over who wins and loses.

There was a post from Joey below which kind of covers the way in which this creates an environment that the sites can manipulate using these bots. They don't need any of the other obvious rigging stuff because they ensure a certain win rate for all players on the site using the bots themselves and the difficultly at which they play against each player. I am not saying GG is or isn't doing this but wanted to make the distinction to what Deeplay offers as a service. I actually think this is far worse for the ecosystem because its almost impossible for anyone to spot.

One of the things that strikes me most is for anyone trying to play honestly online these days, how much it must mess with your head when your on a downswing knowing all this manipulation is happening online and wondering if you are running bad or is there something else going on. I guess this is all part of playing online these days.

This is confirmed

Live stream at @EDGEGamingExpo - we should be able to ask questions from YouTube chat at the end

is anyone recording it?

The recordings are available after the live stream ends. If you go into 'live' section in the YT channel he linked you can see the stream from yesterday.

The main talk of interested to this topic is on in around an hour (15.30 GMT / 11.30 EST) - "Rise of the machines: Can Human Players Survive the AI Bot Invasion?"

Good conversation, it was quite hard to hear Jonathan but I have previously heard him speak on the topic and read his really great piece that he wrote. The distribution of clicks is a cool example, it must have been fun down through the years on both the botting side and the operator security side playing these cat and mouse games.

The talk centred around how this is an arms race with the best sites now at the cutting edge of innovation in terms of AI solutions, I think its really commendable to hear that these resources are getting poured into trying solutions but I will say that I don't believe this is an arms race the sites can win, they will always be behind in terms of what the other side is doing and playing catchup and I think the advances that we have, and are seeing will make this an intractable problem going forward if we focus on this as an arms race.

What I haven't seen asked in these discussion or written about around this topic is can we find completely out of the box alternatives to solving these problem. Are the sites working on anything like this which is completely unique to ways in which they currently fight cheating? I feel like there is some tunnel vision towards the solutions The first thing that comes to mind when people think down this path is cameras but then people talk about the invasive nature of it, how do sites even use and store the data. The main thing I would ask, does it even solve any of the issues? If anyone follows Chess, former world champion Kramnik has been calling out half of he top chess players for cheating over the last few week including those that steam while playing.

Given all the AI, sensor, mapping technology it feels like there should be better solutions that can be found towards creating some sort of playing area at home for online use that can be completely monitored. It would have application across anything humans wanted to do competitively online going forward. That could be completely pie in the sky stuff but it feels very much to me like if solutions are to be found they will come from something which is completely outside the current thinking in how sites are trying to tackle these problems.

It's an interesting question BJDegen because once you develop the solutions to stop outside "bots" - they will develop their own solution to remain undetected. The first "people" you look at are the winners and people who play long hours. If a "bot" is playing on the site and losing money then they would be harder to detect by an honest site that isn't putting the "bots" in themselves. If the sites are deploying the "bots" themselves they can create masquerading strategies of "new" bots showing up.

Using some type of deeper level KYC strategy + monitoring of the program seems pretty easy to overcome in 2024 on the player side so would love to hear more about how people are thinking about detecting that. I am supposed to have the head of A5 labs on my show (Not Alex or John) to talk more about it. People have built KYC defeating strats for years and sometimes the site won't track that at all. The topic of RTA itself is interesting because how different is a HUD than a "RTA" using some type of "AI strategy" who suggests you an output based on your input.

Creating a more "secured environment" at higher stakes with deeper level monitoring that you are referencing involving cameras/AI detectors might be a good step for a limited number of cases but with how easy it is to build/deploy RTA agents - you need to rely on other methods at games where that isn't being done. There is the case to be made that lot of people won't like this and won't want to play which I wouldn't mind as a site if I wanted to take the security to the next level. Your point about ethical data management is also very relevant because the gap between computer assisted and human is closing pretty fast and it's never been easier to use modern tools in real time to assist your game. How much different are those people than a "bot"?

If my goal as a site was to take collusion, super using, RTA, stable play, agent play, dee play serious while they build their own strategies to remain undetected then you have to be really good at your own data analysis. I believe that some sites are working on this very actively and taking it seriously while others are behind the curve and potentially actively working with the liquidity providers.

Game selection and play selection is more important than ever with "dee play" accounts masquerading as "regs" w/ all types of style.

There are 100s of arenas where it's pretty easy to deploy that strategy without much to worry about and it's never been easier to create your own arena while solving payments w/ crypto so lots of people figured out that strategy. Companies like "deeplay" are making it easier for those people to create their own "arena" which creates the perception of a real game but is designed (sometimes in tandem with the "software" the game runs on to create a hold they feel comfortable with.)

It's safe to say the Neo boys have won this round playing by their own rules so we might need to hope they made enough money to quit and are getting bored with poker - they dropped the Bloomberg flex piece and advertised their new services in other markets so maybe their best guys are focusing on that

You can't really bot at scale without either the site or the regs at mid/high stakes seeing something is up. I think some of the things you mentioned are the reasons we have seen the Bot Farm pivot and transform down through the years. They have gone from running bots at scale, to franchising out the software to allow others to run bot farms to finally giving the software to the end users to run the 'AI Brain' as Bots themselves. This all points towards it getting harder and harder to run them at scale without getting caught.

Stars has had many bot problems down through the years but obviously does a good job at catching up and implementing counter measures. The issue is that until now the bots have been somewhat dumb in implementation which means you can catch them relativity easily but that is rapidly changing with the advancements in AI. The new wave of AI enabled bots will be a completely different animal. The sophistication of them really shocked me when I found that video I posted on the previous page from one of NZT's sales pitches where the features already included sharing hole cards, using an NE baseline while deviating to exploit and this was all 4 years ago! I think the scale of their operation is lost on people. This is a company with hundreds of employees that are hiring developers, data scientists, ML/AI engineers, product managers etc.

These are all in my eyes added barriers to entry for cheaters. They are small parts of a larger puzzle you put in place to make it as hard as possible for people to cheat which hopefully cumulatively adds up to a high barrier to entry.

I'd argue these are steps you need to take not only to secure higher stakes games but plans you need to start making and implementing site wide across all stakes above fairly low levels. We aren't just on a precipice of bots that are indistinguishable from humans but currently humans cheating with machines I would say is still the biggest issue in many games. I don't care about some random person looking up a spot in GTOw. The fact some of the bigger names in the games thinks putting a delay on this service would solve many of the problems is incredibly naïve about the larger current landscape.

The products built from the ground up privately to be used as RTA are currently in real danger of spilling out into general consumption. You can already find the the vision part built to plug into API's that some companies make available and give yourself quite a decent homebrew kit. One of the more major problems is that there are people with private systems built form the ground up to be used as RTA and avoid detection completely outside of the Russian bot farm in this article that have their own AI/custom sims that operate by offering the system as RTA in like a CFP way to form large teams of cheaters.

The trust currently at really high stakes kind of blows my mind. All these guys have the resources to have custom solutions. The fact those games run with the ability of people to cheat currently is incredible but I guess the EV is all coming from the spots in the game so even if others feel someone is cheating that isn't all that relevant to them. I wouldn't be surprised if we seen the true extent of cheating online in poker that it would make cyclists blush. Who is the current Lance Armstrong of poker?

Changing gears completely towards the monitoring systems, if you have used a VR headset before when you don't have enough room you can physically draw a guardian where the system warns you when you move too close to the walls you have drawn. You have this playing area inside of which it is monitoring almost everything that you are doing along with building a model of the area inside the zone you have drawn. The headset is tracking a huge amount of data that could be used for security. It has cameras on the outside that is tracking the entire area in which the player is playing. They have cameras on the inside tracking head and eye movement. You could see exactly what the players is viewing inside the headset. It is tracking hand and body movement. It using a vast array of sensors like LIDAR to map 3D version of your real environment. There is a whole host of other sensors tracking a wide array of other stuff that could be used. This tech has been around for years. I am not even suggesting that we use a headset but given all this technology with AI it feels like something relatively cost effective could be designed specially to monitor players when playing something competitively online. Things like you have AI tracking hand movements to screen movements to show anomalies, only you have hundreds of these metrics. I know this probably seems like futuristic nonsense to many but I don't think that is the case. In my world these completely out of the box solutions are how the sites play offence rather than the current losing battle of the AI arms race they are embroiled in.

I am not that worried about the sites with lack of morals or security. That is down to the players to decide where they want to play. I think ultimately this problem will get so bad that only sites taking this serious will survive if anyone does survive, I laugh reading the current HS GG thread on them privatising the games. All these butthurt people complaining like any of this is news. If you let the fox into the hen house you can't complain when he does fox things. GG never hid the vison they had for poker.

They all lived happily ever after.

IMO it's the most fascinating area of our business. There is constantly something interesting happening, it's a fantastic mix of technology and detective work.

I see where you're coming from but I disagree. My view of the industry is that this problem will destroy the sites who are unwilling or unable to spend on staying ahead in the race, but it won't become an intractable problem any time soon, perhaps ever.

The thing is, we don't have to be perfect at detecting every bot or AI solution. We just have to be good enough to make the villains decide to go elsewhere. Generally that means catching them often enough and seizing enough of their money that they decide it's easier to play at a site with weaker security. This has always been the case - I remember years ago we had infiltrated a botting forum and they raised the 'risk level' of MPN from green to amber and started warning people to play elsewhere. We celebrated. (At the time, only Stars was red).

Sites like 888, Party, ACR, possibly even GG - they will be gone in a few years unless something changes, but those of us who continue to invest and stay at the front of the race will survive and thrive as this problem becomes more and more of a reason for players to move around.

'Out of the box' ideas have happened a few times already, the latest such idea is how we're training AI to fight AI, but big data itself was probably the biggest advance before that. I've no doubt that something else will come along, it's just a question of what and when.

We do use tech like this from time to time, so that players can exonerate themselves. There's also some interesting technology coming up with online invigilation. However we have to be careful not to create a scenario where legitimate players' privacy and convenience is compromised too much or nobody will play in the first place.

This is the scariest part about playing online nowadays. Not only bots, but software like h2n that can be setup used bought gameplay data to provide not only RTA, but exploitive RTA. I am incredibly surprised that sites allow it, it is not in the same universe of software as poker tracker or holdem manager.

About bots, it is basically common knowledge at this point that many sites are infested across the games and formats offered. Whichever site manages to mitigate this issue I shall pledge my eternal action to

Without being too promotional here, it's really as simple as this:

- If you can play on WPT Global, do
- If you can't, play on PokerStars

Right now nobody else is worthy of your action

Careful; they might be listening:

Lots of good stuff in here but u won’t be popular lol

Russian Bot Army? Not surprising at all.