Quote:
Originally Posted by Austin Idol
I keep playing PLO with the bots because I am profitable against them - since they are bots - their play is consistent and easy to play against - because I know what they are doing.
They play so predictable - that is what a competitive poker player wants.
To the point - when the poster says we are the problem.
He is kinda right, (i know he might not think so - and is being sarcastic - and will flame for typing this)
If no one played on the site because of bots - the site would be financial encouraged to eliminate them - but when you/people keep playing on the site and pay rake, they have no reason to stop it.
Businesses only hear dollars signs - and when they are making profit - they are not encouraged to change.
Sad but true....
Playing against bots is not profitable. It is possible to be protected by variance for quite some time, and I understand that knowing that a program is playing optimally allows you to make inferences and decisions you never could playing against a human with more random patterns, but a good bot is going to continue to make adjustments based on your statistics and in the long run that's bad business.
I think there are three sets of players on ACR :
1 ) Players making a profit - these players are aware of some shady business at the tables, but it is hard to turn away from profit.
2 ) Amateurs who are going to lose their dollars no matter what, they may get frustrated losing to certain ppl but will likely just continue depositing no matter what.
3 ) Players cheating whether thru botting or simple collusion.
None of the above groups is going to boycott a site, and most of group 2 is made up of American players who don't really have much better options. They aren't on ACR because they have a choice, they are on ACR because they allow them to continue doing what the government has really done an excellent job stopping them from doing. I would never flame you because all your points are right, but asking the people who are NOT the problem to fix the market is a heavy ask, and people very rarely are willing to make changes in their life that benefit them if those changes have any initial perceived cost. Add to that that you're asking humans to do it, and woof you've got problems.
Winning TD actually does yeoman's work in this thread to help people with what he can, and has gotten responses on issues for me a few times already, but I don't think solving integrity issues within gameplay is something that is within his power. These problems are not unique to ACR, Stars/FT/AP etc all had issues with cheating and bots, and we did not have to boycott to get things done. Our problem here is that the site knows that a boycott is not feasible nor is it organizable, and that they are profiting passively from the issue. What we need is someone accountable within the organization at a higher level, and what we have seen in the past is that the site operates without that personnel. The best course of action is simply to report the issues here, so that at least people have the option to review and choose for themselves.
"Sad but true" is just a perfect phrase for the whole situation, and it does not look to be changing anytime soon neither from security removing these players from the site nor with the US changing their stance on gambool. We are not and never will be the problem. But there are laws stating that we are, and we will it seems remain unprotected until that changes.