Mr. Gatorade’s Lies cost me over 70k at Full Tilt

[Bobo Fett]

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And why does even this site only inform them that they are robots when they try and cash out (once again allowing them to create rake and amass a nice little wodge of cash that they can confiscate)?

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I'll let you and josem duke it out over the rest of your post, but I have a simple explanation for this part.

It seems to be fairly widely accepted that there are MANY losing bots out there. Especially from places like the botting site you mention, where I believe the individuals who pay for the software need to do the AI programming themselves.

Now let's say that a poker room is actually able to identify every single bot on its site as it plays. They let the bots play as much as they like. The losing bots, well, lose...to the benefit of everyone (except the botter of course). When the winning bot owners cash out...shut 'em down! Let them spend all of that time playing before they find out they've been busted, rather than busting them right away so they can use that same time to attempt to improve techniques to avoid discovery. Of course, to make this system fair to the players, they need to return the ill-got winnings of the bot back to the victimized players.

Of course this is overly simplistic (for example, I'm sure they can't spot every bot as soon as it sarts playing), but it illustrates some reasons why poker sites might prefer to wait until cashout time to make their move.

[qpw]

That's pretty much my thinking, Bobo.

I don't think taking money from losing 'bots is the pinnacle of ethical behaviour, but it's hardly a major cause for concern.

Allowing winning robots to continue until cashout is more problematic. It means the site is knowingly allowing it's customers to be defrauded. Someone from one of the sites admitted that the money confiscated from simple 'bots (as opposed to colluding 'bots) is not returned to the players from whom it was obtained.

Whether the sites actually refund any money to victimised players is more of a concern.

During the course of this thread it has become clear that there is an almost complete lack of anecdotal evidence that they do.

[Henry17]

I think people greatly over estimate the number of winning bots out there. While it is possible to program a winning bot the amount of work required to do so is extensive. Any site that sells bot software is not selling a program that could be used as a winning bot. Someone would have to be motivated by something other then profit to spend the time making a winning bot only to then sell it for a few hundred dollars. Every copy sold increases the odds of detection. As such winning bots are limited to people who can program them from scratch themselves.

With respect to sites being wilfully blind to bots. I'd say that if it does occur is limited to smaller sites. A site like Stars for example would not even consider it. If you take the time to calculate how much Stars makes in a year you'd realize that it makes no sense for them to risk that amount. Outside of NFL players who risk millions to engage in insane criminal activities for chump change the rest of the world does not risk large amounts of steady income unless the payout is worth it. The extra income from bot players is simply not worth it for any large site.

[qpw]

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With respect to sites being wilfully blind to bots. I'd say that if it does occur is limited to smaller sites. A site like Stars for example would not even consider it. If you take the time to calculate how much Stars makes in a year you'd realize that it makes no sense for them to risk that amount. Outside of NFL players who risk millions to engage in insane criminal activities for chump change the rest of the world does not risk large amounts of steady income unless the payout is worth it. The extra income from bot players is simply not worth it for any large site.

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I'm not sure I see where the risk is for any site.

I'm not saying that they do nothing to remove robots, or even that they only do the bare minimum.

I'm just saying that they do less that they could.

Provided they respond when people complain (and note how anecdotal evidence here is that, generally, they can come back and say a player is not a 'bot with some certainty, very quickly - implying they DO have access to a reliable and foolproof detection method), they are perceived to be doing what they should.

There's no real risk to them to turn a blind eye to robots that no one has noticed, and an obvious profit benefit in allowing them to continue to generate rake (and a nice little BR that can be confiscated if and when anyone does complain).

I do agree that there may well not be that many profitable robots in the wild. The WHE system is bizarre. You pay them for the software and then have to provide your own poker logic and your own screen-scrapers! So the people who buy it are not just greedy, they're daft as well.

I do believe that if robots ever do start getting profitable and their operation starts to threaten the site's bottom line, you will see them become very good at detecting robots, very quickly.

[Henry17]

The risk is potential loss of business. The two major concerns people have about online poker is collusion and bots with collusion being a much larger threat. The sites have a vested interest in making people believe the sites are as safe as possible.

Party introduced a anti-bot text pop up. A few sites monitor playing patterns. If you never sleep or go to the bathroom you get flagged as a bot. They scan your running programs and they also try to detect and screw up screen scraping. I can't really see what else they can do. Truth is if someone really wants to program their own bot from scratch and they have the required skills it is very difficult if not impossible to detect. That is a very small list of people and those people already have a skill set that would earn them a legitimate high income so have less motivation.

The AI is what is hard to program. As such I don't consider the WHE system as a threat. I have not looked at it but it seems to be nothing more then a screen scraping program with a scripting option to design your AI with. I certainly hope he is not asking for more then $60-100 for it.

There is a program that folds hands. I'm somewhat concerned about this software since it would lead to players becoming much tighter players. Something that allows people to play 10+ tables while folding all bad hands and then just popping up the table when the player has a good hand is much easier to do and more of a threat then a profitable bot.

[RIIT]

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Josem: If you and I have the highest level of control/access for our poker server computer then we win regardless - the size of the entity policing us is not an issue because we have god-like power over that entire computer. We can undo and/or manipulate anything on that machine. Until said policing entity catches us and takes away our license, poker server computer, and levies an enormous fine on top of our idiot heads. But then maybe we could write a book about the fastest way to kill a golden goose.

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FYP

Yeah, regulation will be unpossible...onaccounta it's not a live game.

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Regulation of site operators is very possible but not in a manner that involves policing inside the actual server box. Internal server policing is like policing speeders by having the officers actually do the driving for the motorist - and then of course you need somebody to police the police-driver and then you're right back to simple detection methods where you started in the first place.

You only need to do 2 things to police a poker operator in regards to the mechanics of the game itself:

a) detect skewing (of shuffles)
this is solved 100% with Player Determined Shuffling (PDS)

b) detect hinting (of players)
this is solved 100% with plain text message protocol and a dedicated 3rd party protocol analyzer able to detect hints sent to players.

If an operator is not skewing or hinting then the game mechanics are provably honest and any and all threads that begin with "this site is rigged" can be summarily dismissed.

Note that these things are detection level security. It does not mean an operator is physically prevented from skewing or hinting; it just means that they cannot skew or hint undetected. Right now there is not a single internet site with this level of security; and this doesn't seem to bother anybody.

In regards to regulating player behavior within the privacy of their homes: this is not possible given the current governmental limits of the major western democracies. The value of my personal privacy trumps any and all needs that any "socialist" has to control my behavior via the government only for the sake of attempting to implement the definition of online poker that suits them best. For those with this mindset: I call into question their entire genetic ancestry (as well as the value of their offspring present or future) for having produced a level of common sense that fails to understand the natural conditions of the internet where computers outnumber humans 2 to 1 and there is no eye contact between players. There are not english adjectives sufficient to describe my natural reaction to the inescapable fact we are the same species.

RIIT