[NFuego20]

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I think sites need to just openly let people use bots. Why not? Doing this would change the game, but it would not remove skill or make it unfair. If anything, it would make the game even more skill-based, while fostering potentially useful AI research. And the change wouldn't be that radical anyway -- online poker aspires to botness/cyborgness in many ways already. You could argue that allowing bots would not be anything more than the logical extension of allowing programs like PokerTracker and PAHUD and of allowing players to use formulaic strategies they find in books and forums.
As Alobar and others have pointed out, sites really don't have much of an incentive to eliminate bots, and it's unlikely they ever will. So why bother trying to fight a lost battle. If people still want to play against other humans, they can go to the casino or create a private table online with their friends.

i'm not saying that doing this would make good business/political sense for any poker site in the current climate, just that i wish the climate would become more open to this.

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I just couldn't disagree more with this post. One thing that's pretty clear right now is that the vast majority of players we're up against are in fact human. They tilt, they make mistakes, they mix up their play, etc, regardless of the information they may be able to get from Pokertracker. They get tired. They can't play all day long without breaks and if they do there will probably be consequences in terms of profitablity.

Opening the door to just allow bots to overrun the tables would be a mistake that could destroy online poker for good. It would take the game to the level of being no fun at all for casual players, as the incentive for a beginner to play in that environment would be pretty low. The game would change to the point where the person who could produce the most profitable bot could just sell it for financial gain numerous times to many people. If advanced enough, even good players may not have a chance. If a computer program can beat the best chess players in the world, how can you tell me they can't do the same thing with poker? Once we reach that point, it's over.

I for one do not have that many friends with poker accounts where I could set up private tables with them. Even if I did, I could never multi-table the way I do now nor could I be as profitable. On top of that, some of us don't live in a location where live games are much of an option. I'd personally have to drive at least two hours if I wanted to play in a legitimate cardroom.

If people want to create a big AI experiment, then a site should be created devoted to developing and using bots to play poker exclusively against each other. In that case everybody knows what's going on and at least it's a level playing field. But posts like these are really discouraging because I just think some people really underestimate how this can damage the game. There is a huge difference between using poker aids that keep statistics on opponents and being 100% automated. And if you disagree with that, I'd still argue that the poker aid programs would need to go instead of just allowing anybody to use bots on the tables.