[jjshabado]

[ QUOTE ]
Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

No, but here are some Ideas :

1 - Video conference while playing
2 - Voice chat
3 - Poker clients running on a new, private OS
4 - Guilds of bot chasers sharing info and attacking bots.
5 - Public player profiles
6 - Custom Gamepads ( Player would receive a game pad after signing up)

IMHO a poker site has all the tools it needs to block a bot ( timed responses, cursor path, betting patterns , etc ) after something like 10k hands. We should put more pressure on them.

[/ QUOTE ]

On top of the other response:

1. Doesn't actually stop bots. If you got a good enough bot its worth it to pay somebody $10/hour to pretend to be playing, when really they're just doing what the bot tells them.
2. See above. Not to mention, you can't make people talk. It won't be long before we can synthesize voices enough to cover basic poker chat.
3. Extremely User-unfriendly. More importantly its not a guarantee to stop bots. Its probably impossible to come up with secure software, and at the least it would be extremely expensive. Its not a one-off cost, you'd constantly have to update it and fix it.
4. Not really effective. Relies on being able to distinguish bot behaviour from real people. Not a realistic long term solution.
5. Does nothing. You can make up people, or again if you're bots good enough its worth it to pay someone to pretend to play, while only doing what the bot says.
6. This could be gotten around.

All of your solutions rely on Bots not becoming really good at mimicking people, or on technology that would be "tamper proof". Its more than naive (its stupid) too make either of those assumptions. The reality is in time AI will be advanced enough that bots will be able to beat most human players. Thats all it will take to kill online poker.