Bots in PartyPoker's 6-max Limit games?

[spiff21]

I am not a very frequent poster in these forums, I mostly lurk in the MHSH. I introduce myself as an online poker professional since 2 years ago. My main game is short handed middle limit hold'em. I now strongly suspect that my biggest fish pond has been infected with poker bots, and I need to do something about it!

I have found a bunch of players with close to equivalent stats in party's 10/20, 15/30, 20/40 and 30/60 6-max games (They might exist in other games as well but these are the only games I am interested in). I believe these players are non-human bot players. It is hard for me to find concrete evidence since the tools for me, as a regular user, are very limited. I have datamined, played with, observed and tried to chat with these suspicious players. Nothing so far has told me I am wrong.

What caught my attention in the first place was that these players always delay a few seconds before they act pre- and post-flop, except when they have an easy fold decision pre-flop. An obvious example which come up rather frequently: Pre-flop. Player A raises, Bot 3-bets and Player B caps. Player A calls, Bot thinks for a few seconds before it calls the cap. This is an obvious call for pretty much all poker players, but these "bots" _always_ thinks for a few seconds in these spots. Strange me thinks..

I have tried to chat with many of these players, they have never replied.

I have played HU with two of these players. On these occasions I played one hand, sat out, sat in, played one hand and so on for maybe 20 minutes. The "bot" was always ready to play instantly.

I have noticed that these players have a habit of 3-betting with less than stellar hands pre-flop (T7o, 85o etc) in the big blind versus steal raises. But once I cap they always seem to play very straight forward post-flop. One time I exploited this strategy for approximately three hours straight against one particular "bot", but it never adapted. An otherwise good player would?

These are some of the possible bots that I have found in my datamining (I use a custom background picture):


Starting from the upper right corner, the numbers represents:
VPIP, PFR, Avg aggression factor, number of hands played
WTSD, Won$@SD, Att. to steal blinds
Flop, Turn and River aggression factors. Win rate in BB/100
Flop, Turn and River folded to bet

On the other side of the player box the upper number is folded SB to steal and the lower one is folded BB to steal.


As you can see their stats are all very similar. Since the sample sizes are pretty small the stats will probably converge better after more played hands. On the other hand I assume that bots can be tweaked in any way their users want, and therefore their stats may never fully converge.

I have stopped playing at PartyPoker since a month ago. I now only datamine the games. I log on to my Party account about twice a week, and each time I see new players with these stats and slow pace playing style. I have also noticed that some "bots" play no more.

Let us say these players are not bots, where do their playing style come from? I find it strange that suddenly a significant portion of the (assumed) winning players at PartyPoker play a style that, as far as I know, is not widely advocated anywhere.

I have contacted PartyPoker about these observations of mine:

"Dear Henrik,

We thank you for contacting us.

With reference to your email, please note that an investigation has been initiated into these accounts and we assure you that appropriate action will be taken if the accounts are involved in any suspicious activities.

We appreciate your efforts in helping us maintain the integrity of our site.

Contact us anytime, we are available around the clock to assist you with your account related questions and suggestions.


Sincerely,

Logan Nichols
Investigations Team
alerts@PartyAccount.com "

I don't know how urgent matter this is for PartyPoker in these days though, and bots do a good job starting up new tables and keeping them running around the clock.

[stigmata]

If what you say about timing is correct then I agree this looks kinda fishy. Keep us informed of partys response.

[roblin]

ahh, the 5.0sec-bots 30/20/1.5 with defend bb 80%. probably poki. i love playing them. pretty easy to beat HU. usually you can take $200-500 from them before their owner turns them off. =)

they have been running a looong time. have been posted here a few times before but usually some mod removes the thread because this could scare people away from poker. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1

[lotus guardian]

That thread was started by the same guy.

[Mike Haven]

[ QUOTE ]
That thread was started by the same guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Classic! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[JPFisher55]

Wouldn't the bots be losers anyway?

[piranha]

This thread should be taken seriously. I discovered thirty-seven bots on Ultimate Bet about a month ago that played identical. It took several emails to support and a mountain of evidence before they were removed. It was a different bot than these assuming these are.

[Mike Haven]

[ QUOTE ]
This thread should be taken seriously.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes it should.

Sorry.

[ QUOTE ]
I discovered thirty-seven bots on Ultimate Bet about a month ago

[/ QUOTE ]

Good man.

[disjunction]

I have played against several of those (before the ban) and remember thinking that they were playing very cookie-cutter. The term "bot" did pass through my mind. I assigned it about 20% probability, but maybe less because Party has those bot-checks that everybody complains about. You have to distinguish bot from multitabling TAG with the timing. They weren't great but they definitely were better than fish.

Midlimits would be ideal for bots of this quality because there are still enough fish around to beat. If they are bots, your timing tell will go away shortly. I don't see what can be done long-term if they are bots, though, so I just try to beat them and count on the sites to make sure that they don't collude. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Gomez]

"What caught my attention in the first place was that these players always delay a few seconds before they act pre- and post-flop, except when they have an easy fold decision pre-flop. An obvious example which come up rather frequently: Pre-flop. Player A raises, Bot 3-bets and Player B caps. Player A calls, Bot thinks for a few seconds before it calls the cap. This is an obvious call for pretty much all poker players, but these "bots" _always_ thinks for a few seconds in these spots. Strange me thinks."

A good programmer would never have a timing tell in his play. This would be his first concern to avoid detection.

I read bot threads on here 5 or 6 years ago and the consensus (led by the omniscient David Sklansky) was that it was highly unlikely a successfull bot could be written for anything but Heads up play(and possibly Omaha hi low at the lower limits). What has occurred since then to change opinions on this? Has Sklansky changed his stance on this issue?