Hey guys, I have just started reading some articles on GTO/bots and the apocalyptic prophecies for online poker's future and wanted to propose a solution. Here's my question:

What's to stop a poker site from banning a player on the basis that they are employing a 100% GTO strategy (if and when this becomes possible)? I mean in the same way that card counters are banned from live casinos.

Apologies if this has been proposed previously but I could not find a thread along these lines. In truth, I am only just educating myself on the concept of GTO poker (always late to the party!), but it occurs to me that there are very clear similarities with card counting: both are considered to be a theoretically perfect mathematical way to play the respective game, and both guarantee the user an edge. The obvious difference is that the mathematical calculations for Blackjack were "solved" many years ago and the technology for beating the game (albeit illegally) has pretty much always been there. And whilst the majority of card counting schemes have necessitated the use of more that one player, there are a select few gifted individuals who are able to accomplish the feat independently of either technological or human assistance (I believe Stuey Ungar was banned from just about every casino in Vegas because he reputedly always beat the house?).

Now as far as the implications for online poker, I see no reason why a player could not be banned on the basis of successfully executing GTO strategy alone (since even the most sophisticated computer algorithms cannot even do it yet, it would be impossible for a human). Therefore anyone caught playing a 100% accurate GTO strategy should be assumed to be cheating. Sure the botters could get around this by programming an "error quotient" into the algorithm, but surely the site moderators could analyse hand history (say over a 1000 hand sample) and identify anything with a 90% + level of accuracy in utilising GTO theory as suspicious if not outright evidence of guilt; besides which the mere fact that the botters would need to deliberately program in errors to the algorithm to avoid detection would make the bots beatable by definition.

The bottom line is that if casinos can ban card counting (which is in and of itself not illegal), I see no reason why sites can't ban poker players using a GTO strategy (especially since this would only be possible for a human player if they were utilising technology to gain an unfair advantage and thereby breaching the site's terms and conditions).

Thanks for indulging me; guess I'm just looking for a silver lining among all these gloomy clouds!

Your thoughts would be appreciated; and again apologies if this has previously been discussed.

Finally, a solution to the bot epidemic.

I had a deep run in Bovada 112K yesterday,

I executed perfect GTO strategy (as evidence by my deep run)

Gonna be pissed if they read your OPand decide to ban me and all the other perfect GTO peeps.

Poker sites don't need any of your "suspicious if not outright evidence of guilt" logic.

They can simply ban anyone based on "We don't want you as a customer anymore; please withdraw your funds and never come back."

Whether their internal reasoning has anything to do with GTO (or simply a high winrate; or being abusive to customer service; or being rude to other players; etc.) is irrelevant.

The difference between blackjack and poker is that in poker you are not playing against the house. If it were an against the house game, tons of things would have been banned already - huds, hand histories, having an IQ over 50, etc.

Fair point- I guess this explains why poker sites would take a more relaxed approach.

As an interesting aside, does anyone know how online casinos regulate against card counting in black jack?

they use 120 deck shoes and reshuffle after 100 cards.

Exactly.

Many sites have limited or banned some winning players.

By not allowing card counters.

Carbon Poker comes to mind.

Now they're ranked like 40th on Pokerscout. So, it isn't exactly good for business.

It seems like when people talk about GTO they don't understand poker. What's optimal for 1 opponent isn't what's optimal for another opponent. Playing GTO would make you a fish in the long run. Stop trying to be a robot, hominids are the most advanced tech in the universe that we know off.

We are next level to these bot peons lol.

Umm...

Nevermind, carry on.

Shuffle every hand in most cases. Brick and morter casinos often have blackjack machines they don't monitor at all.

Games with live dealers generally suck, terrible penetration and 6/5 blackjack payouts being the two biggest hurdles for card counters.

Software games, they can simply shuffle after every hand, it requires essentially zero time for them do so.

Sites can't ban players that are using a 100% GTO strategy because no one knows what that strategy looks like.

well if u have pio then u know what 100% gto is according to pio. And there is live software for husng/spins which tells u what the correct gto play is at any point in time. I think the most common live assistance software is based purely on pio so u can actually determine who is most likely a bot and who's not.

That's.... ironically accurate.

Poker is a game where the casino becomes the landlord, and players pay the rent.

The casino does not care how you win so long as you pay the rent and do not cause a disturbance to the other renters.

The casino has sub-let the space, and now the players are each their own mini-casino and they lay odds to each other that vary in profitability.

If you don’t like any players odds, simply do not patron that player’s mini-casino.

GTO is impossible for humans without machine help. Humans can't approximate randomness.

While that sounds good in theory, it's been shown not to be true in practice, many times.

and there is no chance for a human to remember a complete strategy.

bots / live software aid is the real problem.

While everyone loves a paranoia frenzy about the "dream machine" their opponents have, the reality is that bots are not really a problem at the higher stakes.
Bots are designed to mass table stakes (mostly <200nl) where the underlying algorithm needed for them to have a few bb WR isn't overly complicated. The strategies are highly exploitative (and thus exploitable).
So yeah what you're suggesting doesn't make much sense and will only create problems for high stakes guys having to 'defend' hand histories/masses of hhs where their line agrees w/Pio.