Bots in PartyPoker's 6-max Limit games?

[PoorTom]

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Has any bots been suspected at ABS/Stars/Full Tilt?
While the site does make money from bots, the integrity and reputation is at risk. Why would a site not stop the bots other than not knowing how?

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A bot which seems to be the main, or most widely available bot out there at the moment, currently supports party, stars, pacific, paradise, full tilt, and ultimate bet. no doubt this functionality is being used. other sites should presumably be free of this particular bot, but no guarantees about any other bots on other sites.

the bot in its 'factory' setup seems to be little more than a breakeven player if that at anything but very low limits, but there are definitely user-modified versions and other bots that seem to be pretty big winners at mid limits.

it doesn't seem that the sites can do much about bots at the moment, even if they were inclined to take it seriously - the bot site has clear guidance for its users on how to get around the few measures that are in place on some sites - basically involves using two networked computers.

i wish there was something that could be done about it though. my main concern with bots is not so much with an individual bot itself (although i don't like the ethics of bots but it seems to be an unavoidable aspect of online poker). it's that it's just infesting the limit games with tight-aggressive, tilt-proof players, playing round the clock, killing the games. the easy answer is to move to NL or another game entirely, but that's a shame, and maybe only a temporary solution. anyway limit holdem is my best game.

there's also the team play/collusion issue which is definitely happening, mainly in full ring games. though i don't think this is as big an advantage/issue overall as some seem to think.

[ChoicestHops]

Not surprising. When the bots at the $20+2 Sit and Gos were discovered it was almost twenty of them running for over two months, 24/7.

[disjunction]

FWIW on the timing thing, at least one of these names has been playing since April, and I have about 3 of them in June. Of the rest I have hands on maybe a little over a half and they start in September. All Party 10/20 and 15/30 because that's where I played before the ban. I don't play as much as most here, and I don't datamine, so I only have 100 hands on each which isn't enough to find a pattern.

I'm still up in the air about the whole thing. Obviously there are going to be a couple of false alarms.

[Newtown]

The way to tell the difference between the bots and the real players with similar stats is the timing tell. Every decision they make other than folding preflop seems to take 4-5 seconds. Like OP pointed out, if the betting is capped and all they can do is call, it still takes them those 4-5 seconds.

Interestingly I don't see any of them online right now so Party must have done something about them.

[Sniper]

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lets see your stats. don't have to share your name but are you defending your BB that much?


I guess there goes my theory that it would be highly unlikely for an outsider to get lumped into the group.

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Bob... you need to tune up your sarcasm detector... Mike is a US Player... he is obviously not on Party now... he's shifting his play to the indian reservations... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Nate tha\\\' Great]

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FWIW on the timing thing, at least one of these names has been playing since April, and I have about 3 of them in June. Of the rest I have hands on maybe a little over a half and they start in September. All Party 10/20 and 15/30 because that's where I played before the ban. I don't play as much as most here, and I don't datamine, so I only have 100 hands on each which isn't enough to find a pattern.

I'm still up in the air about the whole thing. Obviously there are going to be a couple of false alarms.

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My guess is that the problem is relatively localized. Perhaps a small group of college kids at a technical school in Germany or Australia. It could even be just one or two people. I don't think that there's some widely distributed bot program available on some Internet backchannel somewhere, and of course, this is one business where advertising carries some real risks.

That doesn't necessarily make things any better, but it does likely mean that the problem would be a bit easier to resolve, if Party were determined to do so.

[PoorTom]

this timing tell would be trivially easy to fix for any decent programmer. there's no reason to assume that all existing bots even have this tell, only that it's been noted with some bots or one type of bot. in fact, i think it's very unlikely most bots have this tell. i'd guess there's probably more than we realize.

[PoorTom]

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I don't think that there's some widely distributed bot program available on some Internet backchannel somewhere, and of course, this is one business where advertising carries some real risks.


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the bot as mentioned above is exactly this.

you're right though, generally people aren't going to advertise their bots. which i think probably makes it more likely we would underestimate the scale of this than the opposite. but it's hard to say.

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
My guess is that the problem is relatively localized. Perhaps a small group of college kids at a technical school in Germany or Australia. It could even be just one or two people. I don't think that there's some widely distributed bot program available on some Internet backchannel somewhere, and of course, this is one business where advertising carries some real risks.


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Nate, I would estimate that at any given time, at least 1,000 seats are taken up by various bots, across the different sites and levels.

[disjunction]

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this timing tell would be trivially easy to fix for any decent programmer. there's no reason to assume that all existing bots even have this tell

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Tom,

What if a bot's toughest decisions take a lot of CPU cycles?