General Poker Discussion Poker Forums

Hi guys, as I have started playing poker online only recently, I have come across some older (2008-2009) forum posts, complaining especially about iPoker to be bots infested.

Is this still true in 2012?

Which online poker room would you recommend - in terms of fighting the most against bots?
Thank you for your advice. Jiri

I'm currently on my phone, so I'm not gonna start searching the web for links, but if you do some searching you'll find that the botting issue is very much alive, they have threads about this issue on 2p2.

From my understanding the euro sites suffer from this the most, plus there is some speculation on wether or not the sites are even interested in solving this problem as the bots generate a lot of rake for the sites.
Recently it "came out" that William hill had "in house" bots to start games and generate rake..

From my understanding the euro sites suffer from this the most, plus there is some speculation on wether or not the sites are even interested in solving this problem as the bots generate a lot of rake for the sites.
Recently it "came out" that William hill had "in house" bots to start games and generate rake..

Really? Do you have a link?

eta: found it: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/william-hill-ipoker-support-confirmed-use-bots-1108249/

http://h10.abload.de/img/ipokerbotsallowed1p5c.png

O_o

10.1.1.4 in games offered via the Website which benefit from more players or greater liquidity we may deploy electronic players (known as robots, and whose usernames will be "bot") who are pre programmed to play and join in with the game in order to assist the liquidity or the number of players gaming; and

http://www.williamhillcasino.com/terms.htm

However, further reading of the thread makes the chat transcript look like just some newbie support guy getting confused and the t&c is for skill casino games, not poker.

There are no house bots.

Interesting thread on 1knl bots on ipoker, going back years: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/56/medium-stakes-pl-nl/possible-collusion-softplaying-botting-1knl-ipoker-766070/

Stars probably do the most to ensure game integrity and ipoker the least.

I would say that most online threads about bots generate more heat than light so I would be wary at taking stuff you find when you search at face value. A lot of people get very excited about this without actually understanding much about what's involved, so you get a lot of posts along the lines of

1)"Anyone who can't beat a bot is a fish" vs "the problem is not beating the bots, but that bots are taking money from the fish meaning there's less fish money in the game for the regs"

....and....

2)"computers are getting faster and faster it's only a matter of time before someone makes a gto poker bot" vs "no it's much harder than you think, I have a comp sci/maths degree and know a bit about machine learning/game theory and it's really hard".

All of that is totally beside the point I would say that collusion is really the main problem. Most people who are botting actively are not really interested in developing a good poker ai (because that's a really hard and interesting math + computer science problem) they just multiaccount and have their bots collude by sharing holecards, softplaying each other, pumping up 3-way pots where one has the nuts etc. All the same collusion two bad people can do using skype if they want to, but more efficient. Secondly, collusion undermines game integrity and if you're a recreational player, there's nothing worse than feeling that the game is not fair, so this chases recreational players away from the game also.

What that means for us as players is we should keep an eye out for suspicious patterns and protect ourselves. Are there two players who seem to be sitting on every table together? Do they seem to often be in 3-way pots together but never contest heads up pots etc.

Profitable NL bots may be really hard, but they're far from impossible to develop given enough time and skill. I'm fairly certain I could build a bot to beat micro micro stakes and move it up from there, if I had the inclination and time to dedicate to it.

The bots described in the thread above were profitable at 5/10, which just blows my mind tbh, until the regs figured them out after a while and just exploited the hell out of them

http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/interview-with-a-bot-killer/ easy game

my perception of this as a recreational player, as you have mentioned, if Stars are "doing their best" against bots (while iPoker aren't) - then it's better for me to play at Stars (although no rake back) - but more fair game?

Just move to deep PLO. Problem solved.... for a while.

http://pokerfuse.com/news/media-and-software/online-poker-rising-popularity-mit/

Interesting that MIT would offer this kind of class but not something like, "How to cheat slots at your casino."

http://pokerfuse.com/news/media-and-software/online-poker-rising-popularity-mit/

Interesting that MIT would offer this kind of class but not something like, "How to cheat slots at your casino."

MIT was (famously) the home of the team that went into casinos and took a bunch of money playing blackjack. Andy Bloch being a well-known member of that club. So MIT is fine with enterprising maths bods using that to make money gambling.

The fact is that programming a poker ai is a hard computer science/game theory problem and a legitimate area of research for a university. For example, U Toronto have been publishing research on this area for years including the famous heads up limit holdem matches between polaris and Phil Laak and polaris and Matt Hawlirenko.

Ongame has had a problem with bots recently. They confirmed to shut down several accounts.

This happened after regulars gathered more than 36 screennames that were under suspicion and after that danish main stream media reported about it.

The bots were beating 400 NL and were seen on higher levels as well. Right now the notion is that Ongame did solve the problem - at least for now.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/56/medium-stakes-pl-nl/alarming-news-about-botting-ongame-1112918/

Beep......400NL h...e...r..e I c.....o.....m......e beep.

it's definitely scary how fast bots are known to improve and how much they actually have improved in poker. just a few years ago many were convinced that a bot couldn't do much more than shortstack at NLHE in particular.

is this punishable by law anywhere? It's tough with sites that serve the entire world (except the US of course!) but to stereotype for a minute, I imagine most bot programmers are not criminal types and may not even get involved if they felt there was a possibility of going to jail or just getting a criminal record and paying steep fines. I have only read about it briefly, but I suspect the new NV legislation would make running a bot a felony, just as other forms of cheating would be iirc.