[dismalstudent99]

RITT,

1. No one's talking about pure strategies. If you know someone who relies on a pure strategy, please give me his screen name!

There exists a mixed strategy NE, though we may not know what it is.... yet

BTW, computers can randomize better than humans, therefore they can implement mixed strategies more precisely (assuming they are programmed to do so).


2. Why do you assume botting technology has stopped developing (plateaud)? Is there evidence that programmers have "hit a wall"?

With all the attention poker is getting now, some good minds (and some careers) are on the problem.


3. Yes, I am interested in what people enjoy doing -- I want online poker to remain highly populated with players, especially with fish. Therefore, if many players object to bots and threaten to leave online poker, then we should do everything to eliminate the bots. What's "backwards" about that? And what's wrong with "backwards" anyways?

4. Since I pay attention to what interests people, I can confidently say that most people would not enjoy tinkering with a "baby bot" as much as you do. Would I want to play HALO 3 via programming ("Use Grenade 33%, Rockets 66%, Jump when evading 100%")? NO. I'll wear out my thumbs instead.

However, I understand that botting has an intellectual appeal... much like Marcel Proust has an intellectual appeal among the literati. But my point is that these are small groups of people who appreciate these things. When it comes to online poker, size does matter.


5. Talented bots would have a different effect on the poker economy than talented people. This is because the bots can be replicated and become wide-spread, whereas real poker talent seems to be a rare thing. It is this feature makes bots a threat to the game.

One SBRugby playing at 200/400 doesn't affect me. But 2 SBRugby-bots at my 0.10/0.25 would probably cripple me (and stop me from donating money to 0.25/0.50 players) Do you see the difference?


6. Competitive pressures will force major sites to take an anti-bot stance, especially if the bots are good.

Here's an extreme case.

Suppose FTP allows bots but PokerStars bans them.

Suppose I'm a breakeven, 100NL player on FTP. However, today I find out that I have to 6-max against:

2 "SBrugby bots"
1 good player
1 average player, and
1 fish.

My EV just went from 0 to negative.

Obviously, I'm switching to Stars, even if it means putting up with a bunch of irritating anti-botting measures.

It gets worse-- the table at FTP now has only 5 players. The good player can beat the 2 humans but not the 2 bots. Therefore, his EV drops to about zero.

Guess what he does? He leaves, also.

Suppose the remaining two humans are dumb enough to stick around FTP (they are average to fishy, afterall). It's two bots fighting for 2 humans (who start short-stacking), and often times clash with each other (for 0 EV).

Now, because of the high licensing fee of the SBbot, one of the botters decides to quit because FTP has too many bots per human.

(Note: Even the botters will hate the botters!)

So what remains at the FTP table? Three players: 1 bot and 2 humans. The botter makes a nominal profit (subtracting the licensing fee), and the 2 humans loose and never move up. (Note that even a truly talented player might get discouraged and never break through.)

The population at FTP just got reduced by 50%, and that's counting the bots!

Do you think FTP is gonna allow that to happen? HELL no. Not if they can't stop it....


7. However, if none of the poker sites can stop the bots, then there is one other thing a human player can do: Stop playing online. .

8. Are there really 2:1 bots online? (You're not counting PT as a "bot", are you