[qpw]

[ QUOTE ]
With respect to sites being wilfully blind to bots. I'd say that if it does occur is limited to smaller sites. A site like Stars for example would not even consider it. If you take the time to calculate how much Stars makes in a year you'd realize that it makes no sense for them to risk that amount. Outside of NFL players who risk millions to engage in insane criminal activities for chump change the rest of the world does not risk large amounts of steady income unless the payout is worth it. The extra income from bot players is simply not worth it for any large site.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I see where the risk is for any site.

I'm not saying that they do nothing to remove robots, or even that they only do the bare minimum.

I'm just saying that they do less that they could.

Provided they respond when people complain (and note how anecdotal evidence here is that, generally, they can come back and say a player is not a 'bot with some certainty, very quickly - implying they DO have access to a reliable and foolproof detection method), they are perceived to be doing what they should.

There's no real risk to them to turn a blind eye to robots that no one has noticed, and an obvious profit benefit in allowing them to continue to generate rake (and a nice little BR that can be confiscated if and when anyone does complain).

I do agree that there may well not be that many profitable robots in the wild. The WHE system is bizarre. You pay them for the software and then have to provide your own poker logic and your own screen-scrapers! So the people who buy it are not just greedy, they're daft as well.

I do believe that if robots ever do start getting profitable and their operation starts to threaten the site's bottom line, you will see them become very good at detecting robots, very quickly.