[jfk]

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More specifically, if I programmed a bot to play poker according to my style/poker tracker, etc, is this cheating?

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I've spent a lot of years learning how to be a winning poker player. I haven't much time at all learning computer science or mathematical modeling.

If I run into you in a game at Garden City I feel as if we're competing in a fair environment, meaning that we both must rely solely on poker skills to play well.

If I run into you at Stars, where botting is expressing against the user agreement, but you elect to run a bot, I am not just competing against your poker ability, I also must contend with your skills in areas where I'm not able to fairly compete and where I would not choose to compete were all the information about the conditions of our contest available to me.

In theory, bots playing other bots or bots playing humans who knew they were competing against bots would not be cheating. The issue is not the bot, its the lack of disclosure and daylight about the nature of the competition.

Running bots against uninformed opponents is clearly cheating. I've always found it interesting that those who come from a strictly poker background see this line as bright and clear while those who came to the game with a technically oriented background commonly have no issue in using all available technical avenues to gain their edge (like Ray Bornert's promotion of collusion).