Re: War Against the Bots
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No computer programming experience here, so forgive my ignorance. Could bots be combated by the sites slightly changing the software every day or so? Make minor modifications to the graphics, the hand histories, the location of buttons/ items on the screen, how the program interacts with user commands, etc. These changes would be virtually unnoticeable to humans, but would throw off the bots.
Done right, it seems like these changes could not only throw off, but even detect the bots. Say the "bet" button is 20 pixels high. A dumb bot might auto-click in the exact center every time. A smarter bot would be programmed with some element of randomness as to where it clicked to better mimic a human. One day, the site shifts the location of the button 5 pixels upward from the rest of the table. Smart bot still clicks semi-randomly, but now it's missing the button a small portion of the time and is caught.
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Similarly, making a small change to the table layout one hand out of 5,000 would cause bots to click the wrong button or timeout. Easily detectable.
Once a -simple- countermeasure like this is implemented, the bots will drop like flies.
It's not easy (I assume) for a bot owner to get new accounts (that they can deposit and withdraw to and from).
And it's nearly impossible for a programmer to code for an extremely rare occurrence of a slight/random UI alteration.
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