Cheating Poll:

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
I feel the same way as you do. I don't care if people do it, or if people participate in other forms of cheating such as datamining etc.. etc... This is simply because it doesn't really hurt my bottom line much. But it is still cheating.

I would ask you this though. Your newbie girlfriend doesn't play very well, so you(as a good player) give her advice while she's playing. You count her odds for her, you let her know when she's missing some hidden outs, you tell her when she's drawing to a split hand and tell her to fold and such. A guy you played with yesterday that loves to bluff allin on the river bluffs your girlfriend, and you say "wait, that guys an idiot call him!" She does and wins a big pot. You tell her to fold Q10 utg. You aggree this is all ok by you.

Now the next day you have to go off to work but your GF wants to play. In your absence she decides to use a poker bot that she's also had datamining and opponent profiling to give her all the same advice you were giving her the day before. It does all the same things you did the day before. Counts pot odds, gives preflop hand advice, yadda yadda yadda. The only difference is it is software. Is she now cheating? Is this also ok with you?

What if she decides to just leave the bot to play alone while she takes a break and watches tv? The bot is essentially playing for her anyways right? So now what's the diff is she just lets it do the mouse clicks too?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, several things. First uou don't really feel the same way that I do, because I don't feel that more than one player to a hand is cheating. Also with data mining, absent a prohibition by the particular site, I don't think that's cheating either. Data mining may fall in a category of undesireable behavior and if a site wants to ban it and set up their software to make it impossible, or at least very hard, to do, then I have no problem with that, but I have no strong feelings on it either way and absent a prohibition from the site, I wouldn't consider it cheating.

Now as far as the bot that's a simulacrum of me. I dunno, do I really have to address points that are purely hypothetical? Whether or not you ever get a bot that plays good poker, you certainly won't ever get one that mimicks me exactly.

Lets skip to the end question. I don't want to play against bots. I want to play against people. Maybe that's just a foible of mine, but I'd actually rather play against good opponents than lousy bots. (Although, because I believe the current state of bots to be lousy, I'm not currently freaked about the possibility of an occaisional bot sneaking into my games.) So I will only patronize sites that ban bots and try to detect them and prevent them from playing. So I don't care how the slippery slope gets you to bots, I'm still putting them in the cheating category.

Ok, so how about a bot that simply advises (stipulating, won't you, that it doesn't perfectly mimick me.) This is a grey area for me. Because you still have the human element, the player who may choose to follow, or not follow the bot's advice, who may go with a hunch, or start gambling it up because they are stuck, or disregard correct advice that is counter intuitive, or whatever, I don't call this functionally equivalent to playing a bot.

However, I'm leaning against not allowing this. Partly, again, because as a matter of personal bias, I want to play against people, so I'd rather play against you and your committee of advisors than against you and your bot advisor. Partly because, very few people will be able to have an advisor all the time, so sooner or later they have to get out there without their advisor and probably lose their pants...sooner or later they have to actually learn the games themselves or be a perpetual loser. A bot advisor, though, can be there all the time.

So a grey area for me, but I'm leaning toward calling that cheating.

However, I have no problem with something like an odds calculator running. It doesn't tell you how to play, but does that mechanical calculation for you.

--Zetack

[betadecay]

I feel the same way as you do in regards to not caring about whether this happens. I also aggree that there needs to be a clause against anything for it to be cheating. Is more then one player to hand cheating at Stars? I would say no because of their TnC's. Datamining is allowed at several sites. Obviously datamining these sites is not cheating. However Party(my main site) has TnC's against Datamining and more then one player to a hand. So if doing any of these gives a person and edge, they are cheating.

The post was just meant to get people to think about what cheating really is. I think a very faint line is crossed when a good player coaches a worse player in real time(not on stars). The scenario with using the bots was just to make that line more clear. Again this is something were the gain of EV plays a role as the qualifying agent. If a bad player got advice from a worse player, he's no longer cheating as this gives him no edge. If a bad player gets advice from a bad bot, It's the same thing. There is no advantage in doing this, thus there is no cheating occuring.

[davehwm]

[ QUOTE ]
I voted yes. When I first started, I played at the same table as my friend a few times. We told each other our cards over AIM. I did this maybe 8-10 times. We would basically just avoid each other if one of us had a good hand. We weren't good enough to seriously exploit this like manipulating pot sizes, or something like that. But it is still cheating.

This was like 2 years ago. I was playing $25NL. And I was such a bad player that I was probably still losing. I know it's not an excuse, but I just didn't know any better. It seemed pretty harmless at the time. I have never cheated since.

[/ QUOTE ]

It doesn't matter. You cheated, therefore you are slimey, douchebag scum. Don't try to apologize either, it won't be accepted by this "community". You are, forever, a CHEATER.

[IggyWH]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I voted yes. When I first started, I played at the same table as my friend a few times. We told each other our cards over AIM. I did this maybe 8-10 times. We would basically just avoid each other if one of us had a good hand. We weren't good enough to seriously exploit this like manipulating pot sizes, or something like that. But it is still cheating.

This was like 2 years ago. I was playing $25NL. And I was such a bad player that I was probably still losing. I know it's not an excuse, but I just didn't know any better. It seemed pretty harmless at the time. I have never cheated since.

[/ QUOTE ]

It doesn't matter. You cheated, therefore you are slimey, douchebag scum. Don't try to apologize either, it won't be accepted by this "community". You are, forever, a CHEATER.

[/ QUOTE ]

But he didn't know what he was doing was unethical, so we should all continue to keep blowing betadecay...

[paperboyNC]

I havent shared cards, but I have softplayed friends online. That was a long time ago though.