There have been many threads recently about the problems with online poker, trying to pinpoint why the games have got so tough in such a short space of time. There is no one single reason, but things such as training sites, high table caps, seating scripts, HUDs, government regulation, higher rake have all contributed to tougher games.

However, I believe the issue of bots has not been given anywhere near the amount of attention it should be. In my opinion, this will be the single biggest killer of online games in the next 5-10 years. Computer power increases exponentially each year, so we could have fully functioning bots that can play poker far better than humans can much sooner than we think.

It's not just the bots' playing ability themselves, but how easily it can go undetected. Sites have clearly not been good at spotting some of the biggest bot rings in recent years. With exponential increase in technological power, I can see a situation where sites will lose all control of their ability to detect bots, unless they invest significant amounts of resources for bot detection. As online poker is a declining industry already, I just don't see sites doing this. So unfortunately I believe sites will soon lose control of the war against bots and online poker will be a battle of 'who can code the best bot'.

What is everyones thoughts?

Well I agree with you, but I also think people have been talking about this constantly for a very long time.

Eventually sites will get smarter and focus more on creating formats where software isn't very useful instead of trying to do the impossible.

Skynet is coming.

The sites will invest significant amounts of resources for bot detection.

Eventually it will include a very secure, encrypted, internet-poker operating system, that players must boot from. It will be much more "aware" of every running process and peripheral than today's poker client software is, which runs on top of Windows, Android, Mac, etc.

There will also be increased use of video cameras and other bio-metric sensors. Really. They are inexpensive.

Players will be accurately identified before an account is authorized to boot from the secure operating system, not just at the time of withdrawal.

Botters can only win what they are willing to put at risk. And the risks will increase.

I say bring them on

Good point. At least us loosing money to bots would be a reason to keep us alive when the computers take over.

online poker died years ago

live poker is where it's at now

Only a matter of time....lolololol. It happened a few years ago. It's why I only play on Absolute.

Are you worried about people using current bots to beat players in MS-LS, or bots becoming better than the best?

The former has happened, but I believe that Stars (in particular) will take appropriate measures (EVENTUALLY) and that the latter is currently achievable. Kanu mentioned in his podcast that his biggest worry is a bot/human hybrid (le Dream Machine), but that currently nobody (except OTB if he uses one) is good enough.

Any site that doesnt allow a player to record his HH can be BOT FLOODED

Basically u cant even say if the site himself has players who know the cards

Keeping acess to your own HH is a good way of tracking bots

Most internet scandals in online poker where found out by players after analysing HH

Bots will eventually destroy everything. If nothing else, they are extremely likely to outlast the human race. So I'm not really sure what your point is.

Assuming exponential growth of computing power continues, bots will eventually be an enormous problem for online poker, ultimately being able to beat even the very best players. It's just a question of if we're talking 2 years from now or 20 years from now (obviously it will be a gradual process, moving from mid stakes to high stakes, short-stacked to deep-stacked, LHE to NLHE to PLO.) You can try to devise a computer unfriendly poker variant, but people might not want to play it, and it probably won't buy as much time as you'd think.

In the long term, I'm not sure anything can really be done about this. You can track every single thing a person does on their computer, but how do you know they don't have a second computer right next to them with a camera running a bot? You can use increasingly intrusive methods, but when the cost of buying or developing bots continually decreases, it's going to be nightmarish game of whack-a-mole, one I'm not sure the sites can win. The recreational players probably won't want to play if they think they're facing virtually unbeatable computers. But with that said, the sites should surely try to do what they can to stop bots, within reason.

Even if the sites themselves somehow manage to stop bots, poker itself may fundamentally change. You can't stop people from using bots to learn near optimal strategies. The game of poker is complex enough that people probably won't be able to memorize a whole game tree, but it would be very easy to copy how a bot plays preflop along with basic postflop strategies and betsizing. It won't be fun if everyone plays the first half of every hand nearly identically. (This sort of happens in chess with memorized openings, you would see something similar with poker. Especially if poker uses an approximation of the whole game tree while chess computes only an estimation of the value after a limited number of moves, the poker situation could be much worse).

Instead of a game of players trying to figure out what's best and disagreeing on even the most basic aspects of play (betsizing both pre and postflop, what hands are even worth playing, 3bet ranges and polarization, etc.), it'll become a game of "who can most closely emulate the bots method of play." I think a game like poker is much easier to copy than something like chess, where computers completely destroy the top human competitors - especially if you could literally just print out a near-optimal heads up preflop strategy.

Any professional poker player would certainly be wise to consider that their occupation could be drastically impacted, probably for the worse, in about 5 years or so.

Bovada is scary.. .. ..

IKR, once I realize a bot is playing virtually unexploitable poker, I just laugh and figure out a way to take its money.

Who cares,just play real poker.

Is it going to happen? Most likely. Is it going to happen next year? Probably not. There are some GTO bots calling my 12 BB shoves with QT. While we are on the topic, afaik limit is pretty much solved, what about NL HU? 6-max or FR isn't solved yet, amirite? So what about the tournaments? Do we already have perfect pushbots at med stakes Stars rakin in them moneyz?

Also this.

Can bots play mtts?

If not hard to destroy online poker isn't it, cash games been dead for a while.

More bots more money . People should also figure out ways they can multi account.

Amaya's secret new feature to save the business

+1

i'm very new to online poker, but it seems like bots are an issue on all sites at low to mid stakes. Public opinion seems to be that Pokerstars does by far the best job at website security, but there are still bots being found there too. I just recently started playing on Bodog, because I heard their games are really soft, but I didn't realize until I started playing that there are no screen names. Obviously this makes it much easier for a bot to go undetected or for players to just straight up collude.

I'm not worried about my $ because I only deposited $100 and I'm winning consistently, but should I move all my action to Pokerstars? How do others feel about Bodog/Bovada?

I will use every single edge, including bots, that I can to make money and live a profitable life.

AS LONG AS I'M NOT BREAKING THE REAL LAW.

Policy can be dealt with in a million ways. If they require one recorded session of 70 minutes then really how hard is it to just do that for one session submit all the evidence and then go right back to bottom. Which is exactly what I'm going to do. Also if and when they released the list list of poker programs and scripting programs that they don't allow then it is simply a matter of renaming the files on your computer so that these programs don't appear to be active when PokerStars uses cookies to track your computer.

And even then you can still create your own programs that don't register because they don't know what they are if they require one recorded session of 70 minutes then really how hard is it to just do that for one session submit all the evidence and then go right back to botting. Which is EXACTLY what I'm going to do.

Also if and when they released the list of programs that they don't allow then it is simply in matter of renaming the files on your computer so that these programs don't appear to be active went poker stars uses cookies to track your computer. And even then you can still create your own programs that don't register to them because they don't know what they are.. Like I said they are just tried to scoop water out of an ocean with a teaspoon.

It is actually very illegal for them to implement these policies but since it is a battle that is better fought by simply making your own bots and scripts, noone will waste time with a lawsuit to Pokerstars.

Asking for this much proof as to identity is considered invasion of many civil rights, and while this won't matter to serious botters like me, it does matter because they will realize that they are making lits of money from the rake that bitters create. Pokerstars attacks the very people that generate revenue time and time again. This company is useless.

Bots, scripts, that stuff is just being good at programming. If you feel like you don't have an edge in this area, then use the million resources that are available to teach you how to program and code. People are just lazy they have always been lazy and there will always be lazy people to take advantage of. As long as I'm not viewing at persons cards I have absolutely no problem with using bots or scripts for having them used against me.

Call me when you want to talk about the problem of super users which is an actual ethical issues that will destroy poker for more than bots and scripting. As far as bots and scripting and people's problems with them at people's problems with scripting it just reflects how massively uneducated most poker players are whether it's online players are live players that they have a problem with this issue. Education is a great thing for people that actually see the value of it instead of lazy minded morons.

I really hope that xxxx.com eventually launches for real so that people realize that botting iis how poker transitions to being like algorithmic trading in the stock market. Pokerstars is dead anyway. Sites like xxxx.com are just starting.

Go to school, codeacademy.com, teamtreehouse.com, and MIT courseware. Stop being a lazy tool and be big boys and grow the hell up.

Bots will be the doom of online poker as a business. Once word gets out and it becomes common knowledge that there are (unbeatable?) bots out there, the player base will dry up faster than a 60 year old vagina.

Then there are gonna be a whole slew of conspiracy theories about how the sites are using them to make more money (would sound kind of true, tbh).

You're many many years late asks stars how their PLO pool is looking...

Lol. Diablo is going to organize a bot strike. that will show those guys at AYA.

Until the bot demands are met, there will be no peace