Bots in PartyPoker's 6-max Limit games?

[SumZero]

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(this guy claims in that previous post that up to 50% of the players at low stakes Limit games on UB are bots of one sort or another - and the most popular/widely used bot is presently the bot that Ray is pushing on his site.)

anyone out there witnessed this happening?

anyone with an UB db that has hands where this happened??


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It is posts like this that make me think that UB's latest software update that limits hand histories to 5 per table without requiring user intervention isn't just to limit the people who gain an edge by datamining the tables but also to try and prevent people with data from mining from being able to identify bots. Because bots are only bad for a site if anyone can prove they are common there. If no one has enough data to do the analysis, then the only bots that are discovered are bot authors/owners coming forward (against their own interests) and that will be a rare enough event.

[Sniper]

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Does anyone else draw the following conclusions from the bot maker.

He has more than 14 accounts. Some play at lower limits than the OP does and these accounts are not being investigated.

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A successful botter at that level, likely has enough bots running, and the ability to put more in place to replace closed accounts, that the investigation of a mere 14 accounts is a drop in the bucket.

[BugsBunny]

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Of course you could be some 17-yr-old kid who want attention and is 95% talk. In that case you are pretty harmless and the odds are you will grow up before you wreck your life. Anyway I hope so.

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Actually he's 44, a former evangelical student who was going to Oral Roberts and pursuing a CompSci degree. Worked for RealTime Gaming until 2003.

[spiff21]

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A successful botter at that level, likely has enough bots running, and the ability to put more in place to replace closed accounts, that the investigation of a mere 14 accounts is a drop in the bucket.

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If that's the case he will need to modify his bots quite a bit, else I, or anybody with the knowledge shared in this thread, will expose him again as his bots clearly stand out from the other players.

[iH8poker]

The ONLY WAY to effective block bot creation is to do ID checks and ADDRESS verification. The key is to stop the easy creation of hundreds of potential accounts merely by changing your IP address.

Sure a bot maker in Russia could get 20 different people to open a Stars account...but what is Stars going to say when 15 of the 20 accounts from St. Petersburg are bots? Easy, no new accounts from St. Petersburg for a few months, or year. Most other anti-bot techniques do not take into account that a bot producer can pay someone $5/per hour to man several bots. Address verification will centralize the bots at the least. It also is very cheap to impliment. Just send a postcard to the address with a code that needs to be typed in to make a withdrawal in excess of what was deposited (remember, we are only worried about winning bots [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

ID verification is another great step, but may be difficult to track outside of the US. Does Romania care how many citizens they have or for a way to track them? But to counter I would say don't allow Romanias on PokerStars (if this is the case...simple as that). Secondly, (let's assume Russians have SS# and credit agencies) now the bot producer either has to 1)Get a partner for each bot produced or 2)Steal someone identity and change their address to his home city, without getting caught. The second is a crime in most nations. The first means less profit for the bot producer as funds are split (less the real person call Stars and withdraw all funds to his account and screw the bot producer [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] The least expensive ways to do ID checks are 1) Confirm the identity of the poker player is the same as that on the records of the depositing institution...there are probably better ways.

The key is not identifing bots. That is near impossible...as you can ONLY say that someone is a bot 95% of the time at best. The problem is that the same person can create tons of accounts...if this was eliminated, then the penalty associated with getting caught increases dramatically for the bot operator.

All bot operators are equally evil, but some are more evil than others. Those running a bot at night from their house, while playing live during the day are not near as bad for the game as those creating 10's to 100's of bots a year, making $250k+ per year.

If you think about it for just a second...you got a bot that makes $1k a week, you live in Russia and face no criminal penalties ever, why not buy a computer lab, let's say 30 computers and make $30k per week? The crappest of cpu's can run bot software and pokerstars at the same time, I am sure. Do you really expect a bot operator not to do this? You're talking an easy $1mil potential, and it's not illegal, just unethical. Give me a break...

iH8poker

Sniper - what do you think of address and ID verification? You seem to understand the issue much better than others...I simply can not think of anyway to stop bots (that is proactive, not reactive), aside from getting them at the source (the easy of creating fake accounts).

PS - You all may know this but in the player data at PokerStars, you can 'change' your birth date. That is a bit redic.

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Does anyone else draw the following conclusions from the bot maker.

He has more than 14 accounts. Some play at lower limits than the OP does and these accounts are not being investigated.

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A successful botter at that level, likely has enough bots running, and the ability to put more in place to replace closed accounts, that the investigation of a mere 14 accounts is a drop in the bucket.

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[BugsBunny]

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in my example the only encrypted info sent was the rank and suit of each dealt card 6 times (or however many times there are players at the table) - once that info is encrypted we can tell if we know what algorithm is used to encrypt it how long the string of data will be - if the amount of encrypted data alters we can make a guess that the server is sending extra info (colluding) and then void the game.

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The problem with something like that is that you only need 6 bits to send the suit and rank of 1 card. Any kind of valid encryption scheme will involve transmitting more than 6 encrypted bits, which leaves a lot of room for extra baggage to tag along unseen.

If you can't trust the software that the game is being run with then you're basically doomed. That being said there are ways that you can verify the actual software and make sure it doesn't have any backdoors in it (as long as you can trust the auditors verifying the software not to be in cahoots with an evil minded programmer. It always comes down to Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)

The software itself (or at least the key components) could be certified with a digital signature that would ensure it wasn't tampered with. But if a conspiracy was large enough anything would be possible. Of course such a far reaching conspiracy also becomes almost impossible to keep under wraps.

But the bottom line is that there's no practical way to verify the actual data stream itself. You have to be able to trust that it's accurate. The best you can hope for is to verify the integrity of the source of the stream, but if you can do that then the stream itself should be fine. There are also ways that you could verify (within the software) the actual stream itself to make sure it's not being tampered with en route.

Saying that you can't ensure that "branded" software isn't being run and that it's been replaced is simply erroneous - that is a solvable problem.

[Sniper]

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Sniper - what do you think of address and ID verification? You seem to understand the issue much better than others...I simply can not think of anyway to stop bots (that is proactive, not reactive), aside from getting them at the source (the easy of creating fake accounts).

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I think that you've partially answered you own question, in this statement...

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Sure a bot maker in Russia could get 20 different people to open a Stars account

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I'm equally sure a college student could get hundred's of his "closest friends" to do the same.

Additionally, in order for this to be effective at all, ALL sites would have to do this for every signup, before they could play (similar to Neteller)... and then what... random periodic phone calls, asking to confirm their play for the day?

[jukofyork]

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Sure a bot maker in Russia could get 20 different people to open a Stars account...but what is Stars going to say when 15 of the 20 accounts from St. Petersburg are bots? Easy, no new accounts from St. Petersburg for a few months, or year.

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Does Romania care how many citizens they have or for a way to track them? But to counter I would say don't allow Romanias on PokerStars (if this is the case...simple as that).

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Why not ban all black people if one gets caught running a bot? How about all disabled people? What the heck, lets just ban everybody with blue eyes if one of them gets caught!!!

FFS, the cold war ended 15 years ago... perhaps it's time some woke up to the fact that Russians (or Romanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, ...) are NOT ALL gangsters. They're human, just like you or me, and if they want to play poker then why should they be judged by the misdeeds of other's from their country?

Juk

[iH8poker]

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Sniper - what do you think of address and ID verification? You seem to understand the issue much better than others...I simply can not think of anyway to stop bots (that is proactive, not reactive), aside from getting them at the source (the easy of creating fake accounts).

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I think that you've partially answered you own question, in this statement...

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Sure a bot maker in Russia could get 20 different people to open a Stars account

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I'm equally sure a college student could get hundred's of his "closest friends" to do the same.
Additionally, in order for this to be effective at all, ALL sites would have to do this for every signup, before they could play (similar to Neteller)... and then what... random periodic phone calls, asking to confirm their play for the day?

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A few points...not all sites need to do this, just sites that are more concerned about preventing bots than allowing unregulated accounts. Bots will go to the site that is easiest to work with (to a degree).

I agree, my original suggestions were a bit 'radical' or just terrible, but...no periodic phone calls is not necessary. It's all about the initial sign up process. Obviously, if an account was a largely suspect bot account then I would not be against a phone call to them (even just to see if the number still works). Blocking the initial sign-up of the 20 different bot accounts I believe is key.

And, as you mention a college student could get 20 friends to sign up for bots. 1) This is true BUT...most bot makers are probably not college students (older folk have a lot less friends, even for this purpose). 2) If it was a college, then you would assume all 20 sign up about the same time from the same location. This is possible, but an added red flag and further verification measures may be needed. 3) If I was the type to allow someone to use my name to open a pokerstars account, which I knew he made money off of, then I would want compensation and would be tempted to contact pokerstars directly to find out how much I had on balance with them...$10k or more would present an interesting situation, since the money by all legal accounts is yours.

Thank you Sniper for responding to my questions...I'm tired and dont' know all the answers...I would like to here your ideas (they are probably somewher in the thread, I'll look tomorrow). Night all...

[MATT111]

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Does Romania care how many citizens they have or for a way to track them?

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LOL.