[BluffTHIS!]

Most of you have probably seen the huge thread in the zoo on bots on FT, as well as many past threads on botting. Obviously for non-botters this is a serious issue that harms both the profitability of the game for winning players and is an integrity issue that can scare away fish. So I want to know if any of you programmers could write or concept design an algorithm to stop bots on a site and that was impervious to being adjusted to. That is, you could lay it all out right here and they couldn't do a damn thing to adjust.

My programming days are long behind me in Pascal and C, and I'm not up on the state of programming today much. But from what I understand, the key to stopping bots is screwing up their inputs, and that they depend on screen scraping for same, and also on constant updates to adjust to changes in site software. Obviously if one of you has a method that is highly unlikely to be adjusted to, but still could be if the algorithm were known, then it would be better to keep it on the QT and just make a private suggestion to the sites.

But I am asking can you come up with one here that can't be adjusted to? And note that another key factor, despite the fact that computers are unbelieveably fast, is that time is of the essence to a bot program, and merely slogging it down a certain percentage where it times out on tables would do the trick if that is possible (because of having to make more processing calculations of the scrapings via measures below). As a naive suggestion perhaps, can the RNG or other inputs for same like random mouse movements, etc., be used to constantly change the precise location of the flop? It would still of course have to fall in a general area, but could vary. Or could the software randomly do the same with hole cards? Or even vibrate the hole cards and flop slightly but not to a degree to be annoying to the average casual player (and of course where it hit each time to start a vibration would have to be random as well)?

This forum has a lot of very smart programmers and computer geeks, and I would place a helluva lot more confidence in the abilities of the posters on 2+2 in general than in that of the programmers the sites have. And *if* such a method could be worked out here, the sites would have zero excuse not to implement it. So can it be done and which of you can post a solution here?



N.B.: I want to give credit to poster Grasshopp3r for sharing some thoughts on anti-botting. I am witholding a specific measure he came up with at his request.