Official Full Tilt Poker Response to Bot Thread

[stompin]

Its clear poker sites need to change their policies on bots or they're in for a losing battle.

Proof beyond a reasonable doubt will never happen, assuming the human sweatshop defense is acceptable.

Lets be realistic about the human sweatshop though...Isn't it a lot easier and more likely that if such a system exist to produce near exact results over large samples, and this system seems to cover all streets of play (seemingly complex rulesset) that it is much easier and more practical to implement using a programs?

It would be an immense task to have humans learn a system and execute with such ungodly performance that you cant tell who is the teacher and who is the student. Has there been any evidence of ramp up time on any of the accounts to support that they were learning this new system?

I wouldn't see it an issue at all if human botting were banned as well...or any excessively systematic play that suggests a team environment, or excessive sw assistance. You dont have to take their money, but kindly let them know you arent interested in thier business show them the door tyvm.

The number or legitimate human botshops that would be inconvenienced would be negligible to the the number to bots operating under the guise of being a human botshop. Why? because a human botshop, while theoretically possible, is completely impracticable. I see no reason why anyone with a system so well defined would continue to try and have human botters when it is so much easier to code it - especially when they cant get caught either way. makes no sense.

If you want to avert the bot crisis that is surely imminent, you need to eliminate the cover provided by the human botshop. Ban all play that looks like an excessively systematic strip mining operation. no explanations other than we dont want your business. give them back their money and say good bye. if you can prove beyond a doubt they are bots, keep their money.

Even this will only slow them down as they get smart and disguise their behavior better.

If you are a legitimate player who thinks you will get tangled up by such a policy...I dunno...take a pee break once in a while, tilt like everyone else on the planet, take shots and lose 1/4 your roll in one night, switch from a 20/15 to a 40/30 after six beer. works for me.

[pyedog]

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And if they are pressing the same buttons in the same situations, because the same decision support software profile (that seems to be allowed by the sites) tells them to push the same buttons?...

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Is anyone else surprised that support software telling players exactly what plays to make isn't banned by the big poker sites? I guess I'm naive but I thought that any software telling players explicitly what to do is against the rules.

Either way, I really think this software should be banned. It isn't quite as harmful as botting because at least real people are required to push the buttons. But it is still cheating and can help to facilitate these types of poker sweatshops.

[dp13368]

I keep seeing comment about FTP allowing these guys to change their FTP screenames.

Where did this come from?

[APerfect10]

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FTPSean, if you know anything about stats, I can show you tests proving (to the furthest extent I can) that there is no way these users cannot be bots.

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Can your stats differentiate between BOTs and Humans w/ Decision Support Software?

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The results I'm getting make it very unlikely humans had more than a tiny impact on the hands these users played (in other words bots played almost every single hand).


For example, let's say I test Ho: p1 = p2 vs. Ha: p1 != p2, and I want to compare vpip of 1forthethumb to full_tilting.

Using a two sample test for proportions, we get a test statistic of -.00005! This means it's pretty much impossible to reject Ho, that the vpip for the two players is the same. I think you will find similar results comparing pfr, betting, raising, cbets, etc.

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You didn't answer my question...

Players using the same Decision Support Software Profile would be expected to have converging stats over a large enough sample size. How can the stats alone determine if a human or a bot was actually pushing the buttons?

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That's more of a practical concern, I find it unlikely they all sat in a room pressing the same buttons for every type of situation.

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And if they are pressing the same buttons in the same situations, because the same decision support software profile (that seems to be allowed by the sites) tells them to push the same buttons?...

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Do you honestly believe that a human could stick by some decision support software for 400K hands and not deviate from it at all? Doesn't seem like human nature to me. Even if they deviated from this software for only 1 or 2 hands per 100 it would create anomaly's in some of the high deviation stats...

While I understand your thinking, I dont think its logical or even possible.

[KurtSF]

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I keep seeing comment about FTP allowing these guys to change their FTP screenames.

Where did this come from?

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From the individual posters. Its been done before for extreme circumstances and this seems like an extreme circumstance, so the possibility is being discussed.

[KurtSF]

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Do you honestly believe that a human could stick by some decision support software for 400K hands and not deviate from it at all? Doesn't seem like human nature to me. Even if they deviated from this software for only 1 or 2 hands per 100 it would create anomaly's in some of the high deviation stats...

While I understand your thinking, I dont think its logical or even possible.

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Even if these are bots its known that they sometimes would be run under human "control". There is known noise in the system, and the numbers are STILL this close.

[sirpupnyc]

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As for the one month "investigation" who knows what that actually entailed. Some poker sites take a week just to reply to a simple email. So they probably sent an initial stock email in the first week, spent two weeks pretending to investigate (consisting of maybe one hour of actual research) and then another week preparing the reply email.

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Clearly it's time for FTPSean to post some evidence of the investigation...meeting transcripts, investigators' pay stubs, Starbucks and pizza receipts from late-night investigation sessions, photos of the investigation HQ (careful attention to ergonomics and reasonable clutter, please...2+2 has a good eye). Details of the secret bot-investigation system wouldn't hurt...clearly nobody here thinks your system is very good, so why would they want to steal it?

[UATrewqaz]

There needs to be some sort of middle ground.

Obviously I don't want poker sites confiscating funds right and left over any little matter, as that would lead to horrible problems.

And obviously I don't want botters/scammers/cheaters running amok either.

Perhaps needing "proof beyond any doubt" is necessary for confiscation, however poker sites need to have penalities or recourses BESIDES this.

I think in this case something along the lines of "Ok, we've investigated you. We can't PROVE you are doing anything shady, but it's pretty clear you probably are, you can keep your funds but take your business elsewhere"

Or "You can keep playing here, but knock off the BS (4 accounts playing simultatneous from the same IP address"

[scscoach]

I just withdrew all of my money and am moving to a safer site

[B00T]

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Of course the results were inconclusive. Short of having a video of them cheating or using spyware to find a bot program on their computer (and from what I understand even this can be easily circumvented), there's no way you can have 100% conclusive proof that they were botting.

However, by examining the stats and the responses by the suspects themselves in this thread, it should be fairly obvious that these guys are a huge favorite to be playing in an unethical manner.

-The deviations between the stats show less variation than what a single player would show between various samples.

-At least one of the guys has lied more than once in the thread.

-They always play at the same time. Nobody ever takes a pee break, nobody plays from their home computer, etc. etc.

-They claim to constantly discuss hands, yet their game never changed nor improved during the course of the data set.

This isn't an American court. A reasonable doubt alone isn't enough to justify allowing these guys to continue to play on Full Tilt. As long as these guys are better than 50% to be cheating, Full Tilt has every reason to show them the door. Personally I make it at better than 90% they're cheating.

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Best post in the thread.