Bots in PartyPoker's 6-max Limit games?

[Phil153]

By the sounds of your activities I'm pretty sure you're a bot maker yourself, so it's kind of amusing having an ethics discussion with you.

Of course it's not practical to ban people from a certain area. But there are definitely a far higher proportion of cheats from Russia and Eastern Europe than anywhere else. It's well known that most of the organized gangs that take on the high stakes are from these countries.

If the problem gets large enough then sites have to do whatever it takes. I believe Party Poker already bans India for example.

[Theodore Donald Kiravatsos]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

The bots were all colluding with each other and communicating information about their hole cards, and they would take a flop only when the distribution of hole cards was such that the odds on the flop sidebet were favorable for the players. Because they were all bots, they were playing 600 hands an hour, folding nearly every flop.

Remember the side bet in the ring games? It seems that, rather than get rid of the bots, Party took the sidebet option away from the players so as not to get burned on this prop.


[/ QUOTE ]

That doesn't sound right. You had to place the sidebet before the cards were dealt, for one thing.

[/ QUOTE ]
You can't lose the flop side bet if there's no flop. So they only saw flops when the odds on the side bets were in their favor.

[/ QUOTE ]

Righto. Here is the link.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...602&fpart=1

Shortly after this post surfaced, Party disallowed side bets in ring games. Easier to kill the unfavorable prop bet rather than to eradicate the bots, it would seem.

[aflaba]

[ QUOTE ]
By the sounds of your activities I'm pretty sure you're a bot maker yourself, so it's kind of amusing having an ethics discussion with you.

Of course it's not practical to ban people from a certain area. But there are definitely a far higher proportion of cheats from Russia and Eastern Europe than anywhere else. It's well known that most of the organized gangs that take on the high stakes are from these countries.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think there is any problem with banning people from specific countries at all. If a site markets itself in only certain markets they count on getting 95%+ of their customers from those countries. If they then see that they have a some activity from some other country as well (like Russia), maybe 0.5%, but that they estimate that the russins make up for 70% of their cheats, then just ban them.

FWIW Denmark is banned from almost all casino sites.

[FULL RAKE]

[ QUOTE ]
Interaccount transfers should be even easier to spot. Even if Party is not very much interested in finding bots. It is still in their best interest to monitor ITAs and watch out for chip dumping to prevent multi-accounts. Even if all accounts are actually played by a human. They don't want to award any promotions multiple times to the same person.

[/ QUOTE ]

PP: "We've noticed a lot of IATs from your account to <withdrawal account>"
Bot: "Yeah, I owe him some money, I figured this was easier"
PP: "Well, we can't let you play at the same table anymore"
Bot: "Works for me..."
PP: "You're not a bot, are you?"
Bot: "Of course not, how else would I pass your bot check?"
PP: "Everything looks fine here. ENJOY!

[pokerstudAA]

[ QUOTE ]

Righto. Here is the link.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...602&fpart=1

Shortly after this post surfaced, Party disallowed side bets in ring games. Easier to kill the unfavorable prop bet rather than to eradicate the bots, it would seem.

[/ QUOTE ]

All this is quite interesting reading. Never really considered that bots would be easy to make or very successful. If you can easily program bots to work in a sidebet scam communicating information about the hole cards at the same table you can be sure this occurs in the limit games with bots as well.

The sites realy need to get on top of this problem before it gets out of hand.

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
Sniper, are you saying the bots chip dump to each other so they can filter cashouts through only a few bots?

Me dumb, so I need clarification.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ding Dong, I believe that someone doing extensive data mining could likely verify this.

Just consider... at a normal table, you might expect a couple big winners, mostly small +/- and a couple big losers... a mega botter putting a full table of bots every so often to move money around would not look suspicious at all.

If I were a poker site, I might for example look for players that play mostly the same limit, but decide to "take a shot" at a higher limit or NL table every once in a while... but only end up at tables, with other players also "taking a shot" [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
By the sounds of your activities I'm pretty sure you're a bot maker yourself, so it's kind of amusing having an ethics discussion with you.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well considering: my background is in AI, I openly discuss topics to do with poker AI here (and on other forums), and I'm currently involved with several projects related to poker AI, it should be fairly obvious that I have made plenty of "bots". How does this mean I have been running illegal bots for real money though?

I've also been interested in chess AI for over 10 years, but this doesn't mean I cheat when I play chess online?

So when you say "it's kind of amusing having an ethics discussion with you.", I can't quite see where the great problem is. Do you somehow think that AI in general is bad for humanity? Perhaps you think game playing AI is a bad thing in general?

[ QUOTE ]
Of course it's not practical to ban people from a certain area. But there are definitely a far higher proportion of cheats from Russia and Eastern Europe than anywhere else. It's well known that most of the organized gangs that take on the high stakes are from these countries.

[/ QUOTE ]
Published data?

[ QUOTE ]
If the problem gets large enough then sites have to do whatever it takes. I believe Party Poker already bans India for example.

[/ QUOTE ]
Party poker also bans Thailand, but not because there's rampant bot making in India/Thailand as you seem to believe. I'll leave it up to you to find the REAL reason...

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

You probably don't realize that it is not necessary for every bot account to be able to withdraw?... in fact it is very likely that an individual botter with many bots is using only a *very* small number of withdrawal accounts.

[/ QUOTE ]


If that would be the case, then the sites could some other method. Like sending a code at the day of the deposit. Then the site could let the account be active for the first week, and after that freeze the account if the code does not get entered within that time.

To the player who uses fake addresses this would mean that his bots can only run for a week. If you couple this with the no-withdrawal rule, then it get's even more troublesome for the botters to get hold of many accounts.

But to make it sufficient, a secure ID verification process is needed as well.

If you have this though, then I can't see the botters being able to open and run lot's of accounts without much hassle.

[/ QUOTE ]

Aflaba, legitimate addresses and phone numbers are easy... I don't believe that anyone smart enough to be a successful mega-botter would need to use made up addresses.

[Phil153]

Your comments on bots speak for themselves.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Of course it's not practical to ban people from a certain area. But there are definitely a far higher proportion of cheats from Russia and Eastern Europe than anywhere else. It's well known that most of the organized gangs that take on the high stakes are from these countries.

[/ QUOTE ]
Published data?

[/ QUOTE ]
Go talk to some high stakes players, especially NL and PLO/PLO8. There's no Oxford Journal of High Stakes Online Poker.

[ QUOTE ]
Party poker also bans Thailand, but not because there's rampant bot making in India/Thailand as you seem to believe.

[/ QUOTE ]
You said it would be ridiculous to ban players based on their geographical location for security reasons. I pointed out that it's already being done. I didn't say for bots.

[iH8poker]

[ QUOTE ]
Aflaba, legitimate addresses and phone numbers are easy... I don't believe that anyone smart enough to be a successful mega-botter would need to use made up addresses.

[/ QUOTE ]
One thing I love about ID verification:
1) If a mega-botter gets into ID theft (which I personally feel he would avoid, simply to play at those sites that did not require this ), then he is getting into REAL crime . Setting up a bot is not a crime. I doubt 'money-laundering' to yourself is a crime either. But if several different 'individuals' funneled their funds to a mega-botter, this would probably be considered money laundering . Many countries look into ID theft and money laundering heavily (simply for tax purposes and asset forfeiture).

I disagree the faking an address and faking an ID is easy (and with no to little risk). Ok, so you find 20 people from your home town to let you use all their information...if you assume that these 20 are from a city that doesn't have that many sign-ups, then as one is discovered being a bot, then the other 19+ from the same city/country are quickly discovered as well.

Even in a populous city, I believe 'botters' are secretive by nature and would NEVER get more than 5 others involved, if possible . If, let's say he had 19 folk in NY city involved, with knowledge that he was making $1mil a year illegally (money laundering/funneling)...they may want a handsome reward for keeping his secret.

Faking an address by other means (let's assume now he is trying to fake 1 address per bot account all by himself). Ok, we can rule out PO Boxes, those would be forbidden. I know the post office will do an 'auto reroute' of mail BUT they notify the sender when mail is rerouted . It wouldn't be hard to fake physical address in your home city but let's say 100 miles away? Now your talking and extra 5 hours of the botters time wasted PER ACCOUNT. For a 40 hour week, that limits him to 8 bots a week and still does not make him any less likely of being discovered, that is just one check. I don't know of any rerouting services that doesn't notify sender.

And, as I mentioned earlier, I doubt the botter wants others to know his address or identity, and would simply go to easier sites to bot.

With the advent of VOIP (or call forwarding, cell phones), legit phone numbers are very easy. Another method would need to be used. Again, I want to consider the sites costs in mind. Sending a postcard to verify address is easy and cheap. Verifying a SS#, via obtaining a credit history, is at a cost of about $12 per person (in the US). This is not TOO expensive, if it was done only on select accounts (those either who are net winners or are involved in money laundering/chip dumping). Sites are already set up to monitor chip dumping.

Again, I want to reinforce the idea is not to eliminate bots entirely but to make faking new account information more costly and a REAL crime, and thus discourage bots using said site and increasing the cost with a bot getting exposed (money confiscated, FBI investigation into ID theft and money laundering, and he has to do the whole process again ). Other techniques that involve rapid exposure of bots and possible ties with certain financial institutions, such as Neteller, that allow financial institution to with-hold withdrawals of accounts that are suspected in money laundering and ID theft (I presume this is already in place).

Ultimately, I believe a site would not want to spend more than an average of $10 per account in performing these checks.

As you mentioned previously Sniper, I don't believe it is very worth while for a poker site (that is taking rake) to look into these matters. I had a previous post that mentioned ways in which the players could make it more costly for sites that did not look into bots, but will save that for another time.

Thank you for taking my post, and I will hang up and listen.