Rewarding BotCatchers Like SukitTrebek

[SweetPea]

Guys,

You need to do some research at the forums frequented by botters.

The good bots are not making the mistakes that full_tilter did. You will not catch the good bot farms in this way.

Go get a WinHoldem forum handle then post some semi-intelligent theory discussion. You'll have plenty of these bad bot owners spilling their guts to you in no time. Just like human players, 75% of them are stupid and doing the same obvious things as full_tilter. 25% of them, though, are smart and totally undetectable by fellow players in any method I've read in the monster, main thread.

You are trying to stop international drug trafficking by arresting 5 stoners sharing a dime bag at a Phish concert.

Stopping the idiots is easy. Not only are they easily discovered, but they are fresh and new...they don't have established profit rolling in and are easily deterred.

Take a guy making $200k+ a year mining micro limits, and it is a different story. The sad fact is that neither we, nor the sites, are as intent on stopping him as he is in protecting his earn.

The poker world needs to stop thinking of botters as 16 year old script kiddies. We are at least a year beyond that. I've yet to hear a suggestion to stopping a sophisticated botter that could not be overcome by throwing $5,000 at some Eastern European rent-a-coder. That's assuming the bot owner isn't a sophisticated programmer himself.