Poker bots and HU Limit
 

I posted this in the heads up forum but would like everyone's take on how to beat them.


I am a regular on UB, Prima Etc. for Hu limit play between 15/30, 20/40 and 50/100. I need help with how to deal with the poker bot explosition. All sites now have users(bots) that are strictly on automatic and make pretty good decisions. I HATE BOTS. I ABSOLUTLY hate them and this topic is not really addressed to much in any forum I read. I am here to name names and get the truth out about bots. I believe they are using commercial programs like winholdem and other programs easily available on the internet for anyone to use.

Lets start on UB. playing 15/30 HU you have perrorjo. After 8.5K hands in PT with him and recoreded all hands with him I have found that he is a bot. It is impossible to call,raise,fold in exactly 1.25 seconds each time over the course of 3 hours and 473 hands he did it EVERY time. After analyzing its play for 2 days straight in poker tracker it raises the same exact way with the same exact cards each and every time. I want to know if anyone else has any infomation on this so I can exploit it and DESTROY the bots!!!

On prima poker you have lots and lots of bots. A lot of them love to sit at a 20/40 6 max table using the collusion feature of winholdem I believe. Since I have never used a bot and only researched and read about them I have my own evidence that it is happening through poker tracker and 113K hands of data. Here are the names of the users playing bots on Prima.

-Alphapkr
-Lau23
-Kung_Poa

All 3 of these players I have again 100% verified not to be real humans. One trick I have found that works great to deturmine if they are real or not is to sit out then wait a min or 2 then sit back in and they will start back INSTANTANIOUS where they left off and bet or call etc. right away over and over. This is just a rant but I will post more and more as I get more information. I want all of us to rise up and try to defeat these bots.

Also- Pokerroom almost all 15/30, 25/50, 50/100 players that just sit 24/hr a day for 6 days straight are not real!!! Again timiing issues and exactness are going to be there downfall. Also I wouldent care about a bot if i could beat it consistently but I cant and it sucks. Just want support on how to destroy them. Not playing them is not an option... Thanks for letting me vent.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

wow, looks like youve got this all figured out. I think instead of posting it here, you should prolly call support at these sites, im sure they would find it interesting.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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After analyzing its play for 2 days straight in poker tracker it raises the same exact way with the same exact cards each and every time. I want to know if anyone else has any infomation on this so I can exploit it and DESTROY the bots!!!


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I just checked my PT and found that I raised every KK I was dealt over the last week, and ALWAYS folded 84o. Wow, turns out I'm a bot -- thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

Yep you seem to have a lot faxts to back u your claims.

P.s good rant by the way

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

Alright, now my non-sarcastic reply.
You seem to have done a little more research than the typical "poker is rigged" poster. Why waste it here though...just what do u want a bunch of college-aged poker players to do for you?
Bring it to the sites' attention, and report back re: what they tell you. There was a SNG bot Saabpo who ALWAYS acted in exactly the same number of seconds, and it was ultimately caught and banned by the poker site. The timing issue, and propensity of those players to resume play as SOON as you come back from 'away' is indeed suspicious. Bring it to somebody's attention who has the power to do something about it, not the schmuks here.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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would like everyone's take on how to beat them.

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Clearly the only way is to be create somekind of superbot to fight back.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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would like everyone's take on how to beat them.

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Clearly the only way is to be create somekind of superbot to fight back.

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Voltron?

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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would like everyone's take on how to beat them.

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Clearly the only way is to be create somekind of superbot to fight back.

[/ QUOTE ] http://www.mulder142.com/pageassets/...her500x490.jpg

OP,

Report it to the sites they'll check it out and sort it I'm sure.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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..... Not playing them is not an option......

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wait...so let me get this straight. There are bots at the limits you play. They beat you. It makes you angry. Yet you can't click the 'stand up/leave table' button or not sit in the first place? I confused.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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All 3 of these players I have again 100% verified not to be real humans. One trick I have found that works great to deturmine if they are real or not is to sit out then wait a min or 2 then sit back in and they will start back INSTANTANIOUS where they left off and bet or call etc. right away over and over.

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Must be a bot, because if you sat out against me HU I'd be raising every hand while you're gone.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

i think if i made a bot to play 15/30 and greater i would have it respond in somekind of random time frame

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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All 3 of these players I have again 100% verified not to be real humans. One trick I have found that works great to deturmine if they are real or not is to sit out then wait a min or 2 then sit back in and they will start back INSTANTANIOUS where they left off and bet or call etc. right away over and over.

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Must be a bot, because if you sat out against me HU I'd be raising every hand while you're gone.

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I'm pretty sure you're missing something here, chief.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

wait. you know exactly how these bots play every hand, you play 15/30 and higher, yet you can't beat them? maybe you should move down

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

i have no idea of whether you are a KOOK or not, but your post raises an issue.

it used to be that the only way to avoid collusion was to become a HU specialist.

then, the univ. of albeta gang developed a HU poki that is said to be unbeatable over time. the chances of versions of this HU bot showing up on the internet are now very good.

therefore, i firmly believe that the last "safe" games are going to disappear. so, we have to play in games now with more than one opponent, because the AI for that is not *nearly* as developed as the AI for HU.

this means we have to play smart and report suspicous activity quickly. we also have to play at sites that are now looking for multi-acct scumbags, and not at sites where this practice is rampant and seemingly not policed.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

I'm glad this was posted. I just started playing hu on ub again. I have been a hu specialist since the days of paradise, and I was thinking the same thing. I have played at least 5 people who I was pretty sure were bots, including perrojo. Last night I did a few experiments and pretty much confirmed this, at least to myself. All of the bots play the same, and they are beatable, IMO, but I could be wrong about that. They do make some effort to hide it, but enough has happened where I was pretty sure, and now I'm pretty really sure. I dont want to post the specifics because it would just tell the bot makers how to be less obvious, but if some "respected" poster wants to PM me and hear what I've seen I'm up for that.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

I don't think this thread should be dismissed. It's been a long time coming. I think it's about time...

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

Exactly. Anyone who remembers Sarahconnor shouldnt be surprised by this. To be quite honest, I wasnt going to say anything because I think I can beat them and saw it as free money, but the more I play them, the more I don't want to play them. Especially if they improve. Plus my last few sessions have been bad, so maybe their "mistakes" are some game theory metagame BS, and I am not a winner. Vexbot and sparbot would likely win at 10/20, so it really wouldnt be that hard for someone to do this.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

One more thing to add--I was never too worried about bots because when you find someone good hu you just dont play them again, and you really dont lose much in expected value finding this out if you play well. In this case, the bot seems to be playing under a bunch of accounts, so every new player you sit with is the bot. This is not good.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

If bots get prolific enough to the point where, say, half of the players online are bots, people are just going to have to play live. It should become pretty obvious when the lower limit games are just as tough as high stakes live games.

Now I don't think bots are inherently evil (unless there's collusion involved), but there's certainly a saturation point. Sites are going to have to fight this problem or potentially risk losing a large percentage of their player base and/or player base growth rate. Sure, there are ignorant suckers out there that would play still...but there are plenty of average bad players out there that want to believe that the world is rigged in some way whether it's a non-random shuffle generator, collusion, bots, whatever. Bad, and good, players still want to believe they have at least a fighting chance to win at poker in a fair game.

Prevention may come at the cost to the end user. Party tried doing the whole pop-up thing that wasn't very popular. I think that the AI is getting better at recognizing things in images; I'm unsure. The one thing that AI isn't really good at is normal, human conversation. I doubt that a bot would say things like "you gotz pwned, you dikshit!!1" Unless, of course, the bot operator is there watching the game. It'll get a little suspicious when all the rooms chat boxes are very silent; or if the same lines of text are repeated in a recognizible pattern (similar to chat room ad bots).

The good news is that online poker is a cash cow so the big rooms have the motivation to do something about it. Long term viability depends on things being on the "up and up". Word will spread pretty fast if things get too bad. Who would knowingly sign up on a site that's infested w/ bots?

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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would like everyone's take on how to beat them.

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Clearly the only way is to be create somekind of superbot to fight back.

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If they ARE bots and aren't any better heads up than Sparbot or Vexbot on Poker Academy then they shouldn't be too hard to figure out because I beat those two like a drum.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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would like everyone's take on how to beat them.

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Clearly the only way is to be create somekind of superbot to fight back.

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If they ARE bots and aren't any better heads up than Sparbot or Vexbot on Poker Academy then they shouldn't be too hard to figure out because I beat those two like a drum.

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Yeah, I've played those bots quite a bit and they don't seem as hard as they're advertized to be. And I'm not really into playing HU.

Must be some marketing/media hype or something.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

They would be tougher if you didnt know you were playing a bot. You can beat them for sure but put an average player against sparbot under a ub account name for 200 hands and i dont think he beats the rake.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

Anyway, I guess my point is that it's a legitimate concern, but nothing to pooh your pants over just yet.

If it does get bad, make sure you have your playing options open when the doomsday switch is triggered. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

Vexbot switched up on me a few sessions ago and started betting out every flop and 3-betting any raise when in the BB. It beat me that session but I've beat it every time since then once I figured out what was going on.

I wonder if online bots do any kind of opponent modeling like that.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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Vexbot switched up on me a few sessions ago and started betting out every flop and 3-betting any raise when in the BB. It beat me that session but I've beat it every time since then once I figured out what was going on.

I wonder if online bots do any kind of opponent modeling like that.

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In my limited experience of simulations, bots are not very good at changing gears. There could be some fairly complex bots out there that do a better job at this, though.

The one thing that's somewhat amusing to me in retrospect is that I got interested in poker because a couple of my old comp. sci. buddies were interested in creating a bot in the summer of 2004. So I looked into the game and how to play.

These guys are really smart (but somewhat misguided, I think), and they have been developing this stuff for awhile getting virtually no where. I haven't talked to them in 3 months, but I doubt they're going anywhere w/ their FR LHE attempt esp. now that the landscape has changed to SH quite a bit. Most of the time they spent procrastinating and working on a generic poker room interface. A couple of months was spent waiting on me to take the lead, but I was busy reseaching the matter to see if it was worth my time. They eventually found a co-worker from Microshaft to take my role.

Instead I started learning poker and dumped the whole idea and decided not to join their "team". They wanted me to be the "project manager". I came to the conclusion that it was way too much work...not to mention that I now somewhat have a bias against real money bots now that I at least a little skilled. It's funny how life works.

The only thing that I've been hearing from this group is that it's always "almost ready to go live." Sounds like any other software project I've worked on that gets moved back. Eventually, they'll have to move on or get somewhere.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

I wonder if online bots do any kind of opponent modeling like that.


the reason the new poki HU bot is so powerful, is because it adapts to your patterns, and profiles your play..

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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I wonder if online bots do any kind of opponent modeling like that.


the reason the new poki HU bot is so powerful, is because it adapts to your patterns, and profiles your play..

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yes, i was going to post this same exact thing.

ive noticed on pokerroom.com that there will be 4 50/100 HU tables with 1 person sitting at each - 4 different players all sitting at a different HU 50/100 table and no one playing them. it always struck me as odd because it would make sense youd have 2 tables with 2 players playing each other, instead of 4 tables with no one playing at all. one reason migth be that each of the 4 know the other four are excellent players and each of the 4 would rather just sit and hope for a fish to sit down, but another explanation would be that its 4 bots who know the others are bots and playing one of your bots against another of your bots wouldnt make sense.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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I wonder if online bots do any kind of opponent modeling like that.


the reason the new poki HU bot is so powerful, is because it adapts to your patterns, and profiles your play..

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Yeah, I know that about the Poki Vexbot but it doesn't make it so powerful that I still don't beat it 4 out 5 times. Although, since I know it's profiling me I play the same hands differently.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

My (former) bot;

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...obbstn/bot.jpg

I'm a bad programmer and was an even worse poker player at the time. It took me an awfully long time to make it profitable though, and if I went back to it I'm sure I might be able to make it smart enough to play .5/1 or 1/2. Not worth my time though, I decided to actually learn the game and find playing easier than programming AI.

This bot had no opponent modeling and played an ABC super tight full ring style. It's scary to think what a minimalist opponent modeling style could do.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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ive noticed on pokerroom.com that there will be 4 50/100 HU tables with 1 person sitting at each - 4 different players all sitting at a different HU 50/100 table and no one playing them. it always struck me as odd because it would make sense youd have 2 tables with 2 players playing each other, instead of 4 tables with no one playing at all. one reason migth be that each of the 4 know the other four are excellent players and each of the 4 would rather just sit and hope for a fish to sit down, but another explanation would be that its 4 bots who know the others are bots and playing one of your bots against another of your bots wouldnt make sense.



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It's more likely they're just strong HU players who only want to play against fish. HU you get people who just refuse to play players they don't feel that they have enough of an edge over.

Re sparbot and vexbot, I think they're really quite weak - I beat them for 5BB/100 when I tried (and I'm no expert, though I do specialize in HU). I can't believe the online bots we're talking about are as bad as that, if they are indeed bots.

green_tea

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

I am on the waiting list right now to play bot perrorojo on UB. Its 6:54 PST and i am waiting (1st up) If you want to watch the bot, log onto UB and I will show you exactly how he is a bot. And contacting support does nothing on UB. Hand history numbers they ask from me, but that will show nothing. They cant analyze time between actions. And prima is even worse... there in game manager tells me to contact support(E-mail and phone) tell me to bring it up to the in game manager. RUN AROUND always with prima. I am recording video of all encounters with bots and then reviewing them so I can adapt and DESTROY the bot invasion!!!

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

what limit?

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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what limit?

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15/30, table Palmdale.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

That did seem shady.

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

i just got in when he sat out.

do you beat this player/bot?

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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That did seem shady.

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I agree

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

Now for the 11 people that watch any Questions? Sorry he turned off his bot and sat out before i could play more but that time should have proved it!!!

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

for those of us who missed it, want to describe just what "proved it"?

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

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Now for the 11 people that watch any Questions? Sorry he turned off his bot and sat out before i could play more but that time should have proved it!!!

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Dopey me, learn to read

Re: Poker bots and HU Limit
 

do you have an accurate, repeatable way of measuring the 1.25 second interval?