[jjshabado]

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Someone at a University will publicly release their code. Look at checkers, you could never play online checkers for money because the computer is unbeatable. People don't need to develop complicated AI to play, because all of the research and results are in the public domain after it was solved in Calgary.

Now Poker is a crapload harder then Checkers to write AI for, but the reality is the hard part (the learning/decision algorithms) will be public domain knowledge. It won't be hard to turn those algorithms into something that anybody can write a bot for.

Even if this wasn't true a small group of people with amazing bots would kill online poker. They're not going to be happy just playing one bot at one table. They'll flood the sites with them because as long as they're good enough that they can beat the rake they make more money by playing more bots.

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I don't say computer play will never be a problem. If poker algorithms advance, if you have good equlibrium approximations and so on - the game will be endangered. This is not the case now, and I don't see it happening in the next years. Look at when the first pokerbot was done (by mike caro far back in 1980. Poker research is actively going on since 5-6 years but the topc of the icecream now from the scientific community is only the HU limit bot polaris that lost to humans). And if research advance to the point to endanger the game - if this happens - people will simply sell hardware calculators that play perfect poker ... , so this is completely independant from any bots and their detection.

So look at checkers, your example. If pokerstars or whomever - having the greatest anti bot detection techniques - offers checkers. Will people play it for real money? I will get simply a second PC and play it, if the game get popular I will manifacture hardware calculator for checkers and sell it to all fishes in mediamarkt (your compusa or whatever).

Solving the game is independant from any bot prevention and detection. If a game gets solved - it's dead. But in the meantime, while it's not the case - why bother to detect losing bots of people that do this as a hobby or as some fishy dream.

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It seems we don't really have any disagreements. I agree the game is not immediately threatened by bots. I'm talking about long term (5 - 15 years out) for online poker.