War Against the Bots

[SweetPea]

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I think it would be better if sites doesn't allow players to access hand histories. No PokerTracker, no PAHUD, no gametime. That would difficult programmers work on making bots.

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That wouldn't work. These guys are making HUGE money. There are hundreds of underpaid, non-Western, coders that would fight for the chance to build a screen scraping hand history builder for less cost than a bot farmer makes in one day.

We're 2 years too late to stop bots without drastic changes to online poker. They could have been stopped in the beginning, but now they've shown their true profit potential to their owners and they won't be stopped by any sort of simple measure.

You have to understand the scale. A bot that makes 1BB/100 at $.50/$1 is pulling in close to the US minimum wage every hour. The cost to setup another computer will be overcome inside the first week of play!

So you're making $100/day with your 1BB/100 $.50/$1 bot. Take your $700 profit at the end of Week #1 and buy another machine. Now you are making $200/day. Wait 3 days and buy another computer...rinse and repeat.

Everyone seems to think that bot presence in poker is increasing linearly. I find that hard to believe. Once a bot owner builds a winner, his presence at the tables will grow almost exponentially until he's saturated the entire market of his available sites, accounts, or IP's. Wouldn't he be a fool not to?

[PokerBob]

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And as to "shotgun" attacks, if they had the desired effect, they're better than the current situation.


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Even if say a DOS attack on a server running a bot website causes said server to 'crash' and negatively impacts the small business owner (and everyone else) who has his website hosted on it?

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Bluff, to reiterate -- I am not trolling here but considering you were calling out M2TR as a 'low ethics' poster in the FT bot thread, I think it would be appropriate for you to clarify your position regarding the use of 'force' against botters/bot websites/etc.

Some of the 'Guerilla warfare' methods mentioned in your OP have the potential to cause damages to persons other then the botters. Would you condone say a DOS attack on a server that hosts a bot website (ignoring the legality of such an attack)?

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LF,

We aren't talking about guns and bombs here and killing people.

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[alphamale1]

I agree with you rid.

I think sites should allow bots if they allow pokertracker. Some players think nothing of collecting months worth of data(at fulltilt) without even having to play at a table through pokertracker. Sounds like a fledgling bot to me.

I know players like to keep their poker tracker advantage.
pokertracker seems like a massively unfair advantage over a recreational player that doesn't know about it and in my mind its not much removed from a fully automated bot.

[aflaba]

Just keep your mouths shut and enjoy another good two years or so. Then find another carrier (game over). That's my plan... actually my plan is retirement, but that's a whole other story.

ADDON: The problem isn't casual botters who try to create a winning but and fail, but serious teams and maybe staff members of poker game development (poki staff) who know they have winning bots and only need to take that to every table on the internet and become mega rich. There is no way of stopping them. Detect that there are bots? They hire 100 indians to do the job. Or better yet, 100 indians to play and 100 indians to input the relevant information to the bots on a separate computer. No way of detection. There is no way to overcome the bot problem... except... proper ID control and collaboration between sites... maybe regional sites as well... it's easier to ID control let's say Sweden than the entire world. And it's harder to recruit a big farming staff. Give bountys to players who reveals bots (50% of money confiscated?) and big farms will become even more of a hassle. So maybe bots will be controlable, but it will take aloooot of work I believe. Or when commercial bots become avalible like chess computers, jeez... forget what I wrote about poker having a chance. New profession in two years... something that won't be taken over by bots this time!

[illunious]

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No computer programming experience here, so forgive my ignorance. Could bots be combated by the sites slightly changing the software every day or so? Make minor modifications to the graphics, the hand histories, the location of buttons/ items on the screen, how the program interacts with user commands, etc. These changes would be virtually unnoticeable to humans, but would throw off the bots.

Done right, it seems like these changes could not only throw off, but even detect the bots. Say the "bet" button is 20 pixels high. A dumb bot might auto-click in the exact center every time. A smarter bot would be programmed with some element of randomness as to where it clicked to better mimic a human. One day, the site shifts the location of the button 5 pixels upward from the rest of the table. Smart bot still clicks semi-randomly, but now it's missing the button a small portion of the time and is caught.

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Similarly, making a small change to the table layout one hand out of 5,000 would cause bots to click the wrong button or timeout. Easily detectable.

Once a -simple- countermeasure like this is implemented, the bots will drop like flies.

It's not easy (I assume) for a bot owner to get new accounts (that they can deposit and withdraw to and from).

And it's nearly impossible for a programmer to code for an extremely rare occurrence of a slight/random UI alteration.

[HBomb]

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+1 lol

[illunious]

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They hire 100 indians to do the job. Or better yet, 100 indians to play and 100 indians to input the relevant information to the bots on a separate computer. No way of detection.

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Here's why this isn't a problem:

Removing the AI software from the equation (which both would need), a single high end server could run 10 virtual machines x 12 tables x 24 hours a day easily. Hiring/training/managing 100 workers requires a -great- deal more infrastructure than turning on one server.

And retaining them would be a huge problem. Workers are going to learn the system within a few months. They will very quickly be able to play 98% of hands without referencing the software. In no time they will be outplaying the system in the other 2%.

At some point they are going to say to themselves, "I don't need this software to tell me what to do. I made $500 last week for this place and was paid $40".

Lots of people use Warcraft as a comparison, but it's not a good one.

In WoW the (china) gold farmers need to sell their gold, they need a website or relentless marketing, paypal, bank account, their customers don't speak the same language. They are basically forced to work as a group.

In poker you have real money and numerous (comparatively easier) ways to cash out. Free BR offers, no monthly fee, and the hardware requirements are far lower.

[cyclonus]

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under what law? not to mention jurisdiction.


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[LeapFrog]

Bluff I think we are at an impasse here. To sum up my feelings:

Either in the case of spam or a botters website it is not ethical to launch any sort of attack that will cause collateral damage. I never followed the Yahoo story back in the day and I don't know how it all shook out but I seriously hope some heads rolled over it.

In war collateral damage may be acceptable as the stakes are high but this is not war. I do not believe in vigilante justice except in the most extreme circumstances. Also please don't cite some 'spam causes x billion per year in damages' example, we are focusing a bit too much on spam here anyways.

Now, riddle me this: If the DOJ believes that say Stars is breaking the law is it ethical for them to launch a massive DOS attack if it floods all the pipes between here and there?

finally
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3) As to "collateral damage", that is unavoidable many times just as in real war as it is very hard to pinpoint an attack that only strikes the intended target. If you want to avoid problems, then don't use IPs/hosts that are indiscriminate as to whom their customers are and what they do.

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As to the bold I stand by my earlier statement:
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Should they have to research every website hosted on it before they put up a page in order to prevent being attacked by vigilantes? Ridiculous.


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[Hume]

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Similarly, making a small change to the table layout one hand out of 5,000 would cause bots to click the wrong button or timeout. Easily detectable.

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If the change is big enough to fool the bots, it's probably big enough to also cause legitimate misclicks.