[Sherman]

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I'm not worried about someone writing a bot and running it in the attempts to make money. What does worry me is a poker site writing its own in-house bots and running them on their own server in cash games.

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This makes no sense whatsoever to me. Why would a poker site do this? Maybe a small poker site. But there is no reason a major site like Stars, FTP, or Party would want to do this. It's simple risk reward. Right now major sites make millions of dollars. Millions! Think about how many hands are player per hour on a major site. Add up the rake and tournament buy-in fees. The major poker sites are making more money than they ever dreamed of. What would happen to that money if they got caught using a bot? No one would play there. They would lose all their business. And for what? A few more BBs/hour using a bot? LOL. There is absolutely no logical reason for a major poker site using a bot.

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I think this "what would they have to gain" argument is nonsense. I will make it very simple. Why make $X in a fair game when you can rig it and make 2*$X.

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Because rigging it to make 2*$X would be long term costly as I have already indicated. I assume the operators of poker sites think logically (this assumption could be completely wrong, but something about PokerStars management and support team tells me it isn't).

Anyhow, take your example to the extreme. Why do casinos payout money at gaming tables and slot machines? I mean, they could make more money according to your theory if they just "rigged" the games to win every hand/pull. So why don't they? Because it is long term -$EV.

Why would live casinos cheat customers any further? It would simply be too costly if they got caught. I don't doubt that some greedy and ignorant owners will/have attempted to do so. But when they get/got caught, the cost will be/is tremendous. So long as owners/managers have 1/2 a clue, poker websites will not run online bots. Anyone who thinks they will doesn't understand EV or doesn't believe online casino owner/managers do.

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You missed my point. I agree that most poker sites wouldn't rig/bot the sites because the risks outweigh the rewards.

My point was that if this is the only basis of comfort you have in the sites, then it is a naive way to looking at things. Sure, most sites won't do anything out of line for the reasons you mentioned above. But there are a lot of sites out there and not all of them are run by honest or intelligent (smart enough to perform the same basic EV/cost benefit analysis you outlined above) people. You seem to be assuming that all of them are.

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I made it clear in my original response that "small" sites might be more tempted to use bots than major sites. So it seems that we agree. Which is partially why I would be skeptical about playing on any new site. For example, Podunk Poker may think b/c they are smaller they a) are less likely to get caught using bots and b) actually can increase their profits by a significant amount using bots. FWIW, they are probably right on both accounts and it wouldn't shock me to see them using bots. But it really would shock me if Stars, FTP, or Party (with less confidence in Party) used bots.