Bots in PartyPoker's 6-max Limit games?

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
For instance...sites could take screen shots (if they already don't), but there would be a privacy uproar. They could send no hand histories at all or those with no names. They could shift cards and buttons round the screen, change colours, send captchas or logic tests. They could attempt to prevent/detect all applications that read the screen and control the mouse. They could insist on all players winning over $5k to have a webcam running. They could send an rep to your home to watch how you 10 table $2000 NL and win 10BB/100 per table, or else they close your account...

[/ QUOTE ]
I think most of these are either unfeasible for the poker site or can be circumvented easily (if not automatically, then by a guy watching his "bot farm" at all times).

All the ideas about moving buttons and captchas are not as good as you may think. I would guess that it would actually become much more of a pain for the human player than for an AI system. If people can write bots to beat such high levels, then I am sure they are smart enough (or will have enough $ to employ a skilled helper) to be able to come up with very robust machine vision systems.

The idea of insisting a WebCam views you as you play could work though. I can't see any easy way around that, and they cost so little these days that the site could provide a USB WebCam for free. This is by far the best idea I have heard (yet) in response to the bot problem... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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

[RayBornert]

[ QUOTE ]
They could patrol around the tables and actually make an attempt to find them.

They can identify players that have been on for extremely long sessions and make sure they are human.

If a bot is playing for 80 hours straight then can't they at least look into it?

If a bot takes some breaks in there to try to counter-act it but has still played for some in-human amount of time like 75 out of 80 hours then it is worth looking into.

Yes, there is the risk of ticking off some crazy fish who just happened to play for an insanely long amount of time. But most winning players who play marathon sessions will understand the need to be pro-active on this stuff.


This is assuming the sites do it the right way and approach the player professionally about it.
This is different from the way many sites seem to have developed of just locking/freezing accounts and not telling anyone why.


If the sites would confiscate funds in the obvious situations that would help a lot as well.
I suspect a significant percentage of the current botters would be intimidated against continuing or trying it in the first place if they hear of someone losing a ton of money after getting caught.

Redistributing it to some of the other players should be considered also of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

micro,

try to think like a site operator for a moment.
your business model is tied to rake generating chairs.

how motivated will you be to spend money to stop those
rake generating chairs?

hmmm ...
spend money to increase rake generating chairs
... or
spend money to decrease rake generating chairs

if you as a player generate x amount of rake per day and
a pro botter generates 10 times that much at the same limit
then i can assure you that what the pro botter wants is 10
times more important than what you want. especially since
the pro botter has almost zero support cost because they
dont ever complain.

about the only thing the site really wants from us is to
appear to be human so that the anti-botters will be appeased.

ray

[Alobar]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
They could patrol around the tables and actually make an attempt to find them.

They can identify players that have been on for extremely long sessions and make sure they are human.

If a bot is playing for 80 hours straight then can't they at least look into it?

If a bot takes some breaks in there to try to counter-act it but has still played for some in-human amount of time like 75 out of 80 hours then it is worth looking into.

Yes, there is the risk of ticking off some crazy fish who just happened to play for an insanely long amount of time. But most winning players who play marathon sessions will understand the need to be pro-active on this stuff.


This is assuming the sites do it the right way and approach the player professionally about it.
This is different from the way many sites seem to have developed of just locking/freezing accounts and not telling anyone why.


If the sites would confiscate funds in the obvious situations that would help a lot as well.
I suspect a significant percentage of the current botters would be intimidated against continuing or trying it in the first place if they hear of someone losing a ton of money after getting caught.

Redistributing it to some of the other players should be considered also of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

micro,

try to think like a site operator for a moment.
your business model is tied to rake generating chairs.

how motivated will you be to spend money to stop those
rake generating chairs?

hmmm ...
spend money to increase rake generating chairs
... or
spend money to decrease rake generating chairs

if you as a player generate x amount of rake per day and
a pro botter generates 10 times that much at the same limit
then i can assure you that what the pro botter wants is 10
times more important than what you want. especially since
the pro botter has almost zero support cost because they
dont ever complain.

about the only thing the site really wants from us is to
appear to be human so that the anti-botters will be appeased.

ray

[/ QUOTE ]

well you finally made a post I agree with

its been proven time and time again, the sites couldnt care less

[Jake (The Snake)]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I remember 2+ years ago we had arguments here and many people thought the idea of winnin bots was a joke. All you have to do is look at chess bots to see what they are capable of. The above quote from the cheaters' forum is a good example of some of the things that are possible.

Besides reporting potential bots to the sites, is there anything productive that regular players can do?

[/ QUOTE ]

jake,

first things first. i love that avatar icon you got man.

i dont know what your goals are so i'm not sure how to
advise you. tell me what you want and i'll try to give
you an honest answer.

ray

[/ QUOTE ]

I want to stop bots.

I am trying to think of ways that regular players can help to do this because it seems unlikely to me that the poker sites will be proactive in doing it, mostly because of the reasons you just said.

[MicroBob]

If the sites used the money from those they caught to fund this I wouldn't have a problem with it.


All who are still on Party - are these guys who were identified still tearing it up on the tables or have they all 'mysteriously' vanished recently.

[JackStrap]

[ QUOTE ]
<background>I am a Commodity Trading Advisor i.e. I trade commodities for a living.</background>

This whole discussion reminds me of the discussion that goes on in the trading community about the proliferation of computerized trading systems. The parallels are simply astounding. People go back and forth about how there are too many computerized systems trading the markets and how there won't be enough losing traders (analogous to our "fish") to feed the markets. There have been such systems since the late 1970s and there are still plenty of retail "fish" in the markets. Interestingly, the vast majority (estimates range from 80%-90%) of people who create and trade computer systems find out that they lose money when deployed in the real world anyway. This is in line with the estimates of the percentage of losing "discretionary" traders. There are also traders who specialize in identifying computerized system activity and exploiting it for profit, as well as firms that heavily market both approaches to retail investors (who then proceed to lose all their money using these methods). All trading system design software comes with a collection of built-in default trading systems, and they all are losers over the long run (as the default bot is reported to be). Anyway, I guess the net effect is that the bots are the system traders of poker, and if that is the case (and the poker economy is dynamic/robust) then a balance will be struck between the "discretionary" poker players and the bots, and the poker economy will be just fine.

M

[/ QUOTE ]

interesting parallel, in contrast i have an other parallel

just look BackGammon where computer have acheived world-class play and the bot phenomena is not a big deal at all (reported by pzon and Robertie).

[Peter_rus]

With futher grow of AI and computers the problem with poker-automating is similar with problem with chess or backgammon. Both games are close to death for commercial purposes due to close to perfect algoritms. An argument for "game of open information" isn't enough, cause vast amount of simulations can cause this lack of info close to "completely enough" i believe. If so - online and live poker will be dead, cause once it's real online - more people will (as already do for some house games) will bring miniaturized devices with them.

I dunno about trading but i've heard - winning strategies there depends on a plenty of info. Who has more info and can handle it right - wins, who lesser - lose. So in poker will win bots who has more info about opponent bots.

Pure mathematical strategies already cannot win in trading markets. So will be with poker industry probably. It will either die or bot-full (and real concur will be between bots not humans) or there'll we be invented more games, more complex, than Texas Holdem thus not computerized easy for current level of AI.

I'm not voting for bots, cause i play myself and win good money, but i understand that really cool AI can win money from me probably already, probably in future (close?). But i also understand that we cannot defend against bots-infesting online and live. This is a law of progress i guess. AI can make a lot of things better than a human today and will make a lot morethings better than a human tomorrow. We can only make this progress slower like oil companies force invention of new kinds of fuel to stay as slow as possible. Protecting of "oldered" (i don't know right word in English) business, the thing we're actually do now by berating the bot-makers won't last long enough. Probably a couple of years.

My position is stay quiet and play while i can make money, building a bankroll for further games in my life, not especially gambling ones.

[JackStrap]

[ QUOTE ]
With futher grow of AI and computers the problem with poker-automating is similar with problem with chess or backgammon. Both games are close to death for commercial purposes due to close to perfect algoritms. An argument for "game of open information" isn't enough, cause vast amount of simulations can cause this lack of info close to "completely enough" i believe. If so - online and live poker will be dead, cause once it's real online - more people will (as already do for some house games) will bring miniaturized devices with them.


[/ QUOTE ]

do think we can said that chess or bg is "close to death" but i agree that since computer dominated those games , they have loose in popularity ... why i dont know

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
<background>I am a Commodity Trading Advisor i.e. I trade commodities for a living.</background>

This whole discussion reminds me of the discussion that goes on in the trading community about the proliferation of computerized trading systems. The parallels are simply astounding. People go back and forth about how there are too many computerized systems trading the markets and how there won't be enough losing traders (analogous to our "fish") to feed the markets. There have been such systems since the late 1970s and there are still plenty of retail "fish" in the markets. Interestingly, the vast majority (estimates range from 80%-90%) of people who create and trade computer systems find out that they lose money when deployed in the real world anyway. This is in line with the estimates of the percentage of losing "discretionary" traders. There are also traders who specialize in identifying computerized system activity and exploiting it for profit, as well as firms that heavily market both approaches to retail investors (who then proceed to lose all their money using these methods). All trading system design software comes with a collection of built-in default trading systems, and they all are losers over the long run (as the default bot is reported to be). Anyway, I guess the net effect is that the bots are the system traders of poker, and if that is the case (and the poker economy is dynamic/robust) then a balance will be struck between the "discretionary" poker players and the bots, and the poker economy will be just fine.

M

[/ QUOTE ]

interesting parallel, in contrast i have an other parallel

just look BackGammon where computer have acheived world-class play and the bot phenomena is not a big deal at all (reported by pzon and Robertie).

[/ QUOTE ]
The main reason for this is simply because you can compare the decision making process to the "world class engine", and if it correlates heavily then you can ask "why would a near world class player be playing me for small stakes?". No such "world class" poker engine exists, so this can't be done for poker (yet).

Another reason is that the decision making process used by Backgammon and Chess engines is vastly different to what is used by a human. This then makes it possible to detect people using engines to make their decisions for them.

I don't know much about playing Backgammon (but I do know quite a lot about the research/methods used to make Backgammon engines and heuristics). What I do know is that in Chess it is possible to detect, with quite a high degree of accuracy, that a human has used an engine to help with even a single move in a game (check out FICS and ICS servers).

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

[RayBornert]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I remember 2+ years ago we had arguments here and many people thought the idea of winnin bots was a joke. All you have to do is look at chess bots to see what they are capable of. The above quote is a good example of some of the things that are possible.

Besides reporting potential bots to the sites, is there anything productive that regular players can do?

[/ QUOTE ]

jake,

first things first. i love that avatar icon you got man.

i dont know what your goals are so i'm not sure how to
advise you. tell me what you want and i'll try to give
you an honest answer.

ray

[/ QUOTE ]

I want to stop bots.

I am trying to think of ways that regular players can help to do this because it seems unlikely to me that the poker sites will be proactive in doing it, mostly because of the reasons you just said.

[/ QUOTE ]

ok then your next step is that you need to decide
how you view the primary role of the game server
insofar as player privacy and true identity is
concerned:

is the game server supposed to do all it can to reveal the
true nature of each player?

or

is the game server supposed to do all it can to cover
the true nature of each player?

ray