riverflush
09-24-2004, 02:17 PM
This is from bigslicknews.com (http://bigslicknews.com):
[ QUOTE ]
Will robots doom online poker?
Yes - I did use the full old-school world robot.
I just like that word better. It conjures up imagery of the Jetsons, Lost in Space, and Short Circuit. Personally, that's the kind of robot I'm comfortable with. Get any more serious than that and we're talking real-life, humanoid robots like this thing that Honda developed:
(pic)
I'm pretty sure it shoots death lasers...
But seriously, the issue of "bots" in online poker was outed this week by a MSNBC feature story. It's a subject that's been argued ad infinitum on the poker newsgroup rec.gambling.poker. The average Joe online poker player probably hasn't given it much thought - but that should change as poker crosses further into the mainstream.
Edward Felten of the online blog Freedom-to-Tinker - which focuses on the crossroads between law and technology - yesterday offered a brief scribe on the issue. In it, he essentially argues that there is nothing an online casino can do to prevent the development of technology that will "auto-play" its games:
Once bots are better than people, it's hard to see why a rational person, with real money at stake, would fail to use a bot. Sure, watching your bot play is less fun than playing yourself; but losing to a bunch of bots isn't much fun either. Old-fashioned human vs. human play will still be seen in very-low-stakes online games, where it's not worth the trouble of deploying a bot, and in in-person games where the non-botness of players can be checked.
The online casinos are kidding themselves if they think they can enforce a no-bots rule. How can they tell what a player is doing in the privacy of his own home? Even if they can tell that a human's hands are on the keyboard, how can they tell whether that human is getting advice from a bot?
You can read the entire entry here.
My thoughts? It's a real issue. One that you should dismiss at your own risk. At this particular moment in online poker history, I'd put the prevalence of bots on the major sites as very low. Even lower would I grade the quality of said bots - especially in No Limit Hold'em, the current game of the moment with poker newbies. The mere fact that No Limit allows a player to make any sized bet at any moment in time (with respect to the blinds) makes the game infinitely more complicated to program in robot form. The same characteristics that make No Limit a completely different game than a spread-limit ring game for humans applies to robots as well. At this current moment in time, most experts in the field believe that bot technology is primitive and very beatable.
That said, this will remain a very relevant issue moving forward for online gaming. Sites will have to invest considerable money and effort to ensure customers that their software is secure and well-policed with respect to collusion and robot play. I personally am not confident that they will be able to win the battle outright. The cat-and-mouse game of technology has already played out in very real form over the past 8 to 10 years. Rogue programmers, derisively referred to as pirates, have already taken down expensive technologies such as DirecTV's access cards and DVD encription. It's essentially an economies of scale issue - potentially millions of internet "pirates" are able and willing to take a shot at cracking technologies that conglomerates such as GM and Sony spend billions to develop. Seemingly overnight, these pirates are often able to crack into products that took years to create. Why? In the long run, even the richest companies can't compete with the millions of instantaneously available hackers on the internet - in every corner of the globe.
One vivid example is the Sega Dreamcast. Released on September 9, 1999 - the Dreamcast was an overnight success, selling 500,000 units in the first 2 weeks and over a million by November. Sega had spent hundreds of millions on the development of the cutting-edge system, which took both graphics and audio to new levels in the video game world. There was just one small problem. By June of 2000, internet pirates that went by names such as "Wildlight" and "kalisto" would have the system's proprietary GD-ROM software completely hacked and bypassed so that games could easily be burned to standard CD-R's. Within 9 months, hackers had compromised what took Sega 4 years to develop. In February of 2001, facing stiff losses and sluggish software sales, Sega threw in the towel, announcing the halt of their flagship product. The Dreamcast could simply not withstand the onslaught of the internet community. The end result? Sega no longer makes gaming consoles. They got out of the business.
So how does this relate to online poker? In the end, online poker is merely software that processes money in a game format. It's not, nor will it ever be foolproof. No doubt companies such as Party Poker and PokerStars have some extremely brilliant programmers on staff to develop safeguards that will battle collusion and robots. The problem is that the internet has potentially millions of programmers just waiting to break those safeguards. Sure, I know what you're saying, "Robot play and outright hacking are two completely different things!" While the concepts may be completely different, the technology involved is not mutually exclusive of each other. The point is not that Party Poker is the same product as the Sega Dreamcast, or even DirecTV. It's that the people willing to compromise one are the same that would attempt the other. And I'd be willing to place a prop bet that more pirates would be willing to take a crack at online poker sites, because money is involved.
Need proof of concern?
When reached for comment by MSNBC, Bob Wolf of TiltWare (the company that licenses the software for Full Tilt Poker), could only muster this on the subject:
"I can't imagine that any good can come of this interview."
He knows...
As for me, I'll continue to focus on the game that gives me the most bang for my buck - real, live poker played in Las Vegas or in the smokey back room of the local VFW. You remember that game, right? The one where you can bust someone's hands if he's caught cheating.
Ok, just kidding, but I feel much better if I can see your face.
[/ QUOTE ]
Direct link to that article here (http://bigslicknews.com/2004/09/will-robots-doom-online-poker.html) - in case it gets moved.
I think that while focusing on 'bots' is important, and it's a legit issue, the real concern should be outright hacking of the software. It is not out of the realm of possibility that internet hackers could figure out ways to see other player's cards, etc. It's always going to be - as refered to above - a cat-and-mouse game.
It's just too easy to dismiss this as silly, or far-fetched, but if guys on the internet could bypass DirectTv's security and many many other technologies, why couldn't they do the same with poker software? There are guys out there who have completely modified their TIVOS and X-boxes, so what makes poker software so special?
Just gets the mind working!
[ QUOTE ]
Will robots doom online poker?
Yes - I did use the full old-school world robot.
I just like that word better. It conjures up imagery of the Jetsons, Lost in Space, and Short Circuit. Personally, that's the kind of robot I'm comfortable with. Get any more serious than that and we're talking real-life, humanoid robots like this thing that Honda developed:
(pic)
I'm pretty sure it shoots death lasers...
But seriously, the issue of "bots" in online poker was outed this week by a MSNBC feature story. It's a subject that's been argued ad infinitum on the poker newsgroup rec.gambling.poker. The average Joe online poker player probably hasn't given it much thought - but that should change as poker crosses further into the mainstream.
Edward Felten of the online blog Freedom-to-Tinker - which focuses on the crossroads between law and technology - yesterday offered a brief scribe on the issue. In it, he essentially argues that there is nothing an online casino can do to prevent the development of technology that will "auto-play" its games:
Once bots are better than people, it's hard to see why a rational person, with real money at stake, would fail to use a bot. Sure, watching your bot play is less fun than playing yourself; but losing to a bunch of bots isn't much fun either. Old-fashioned human vs. human play will still be seen in very-low-stakes online games, where it's not worth the trouble of deploying a bot, and in in-person games where the non-botness of players can be checked.
The online casinos are kidding themselves if they think they can enforce a no-bots rule. How can they tell what a player is doing in the privacy of his own home? Even if they can tell that a human's hands are on the keyboard, how can they tell whether that human is getting advice from a bot?
You can read the entire entry here.
My thoughts? It's a real issue. One that you should dismiss at your own risk. At this particular moment in online poker history, I'd put the prevalence of bots on the major sites as very low. Even lower would I grade the quality of said bots - especially in No Limit Hold'em, the current game of the moment with poker newbies. The mere fact that No Limit allows a player to make any sized bet at any moment in time (with respect to the blinds) makes the game infinitely more complicated to program in robot form. The same characteristics that make No Limit a completely different game than a spread-limit ring game for humans applies to robots as well. At this current moment in time, most experts in the field believe that bot technology is primitive and very beatable.
That said, this will remain a very relevant issue moving forward for online gaming. Sites will have to invest considerable money and effort to ensure customers that their software is secure and well-policed with respect to collusion and robot play. I personally am not confident that they will be able to win the battle outright. The cat-and-mouse game of technology has already played out in very real form over the past 8 to 10 years. Rogue programmers, derisively referred to as pirates, have already taken down expensive technologies such as DirecTV's access cards and DVD encription. It's essentially an economies of scale issue - potentially millions of internet "pirates" are able and willing to take a shot at cracking technologies that conglomerates such as GM and Sony spend billions to develop. Seemingly overnight, these pirates are often able to crack into products that took years to create. Why? In the long run, even the richest companies can't compete with the millions of instantaneously available hackers on the internet - in every corner of the globe.
One vivid example is the Sega Dreamcast. Released on September 9, 1999 - the Dreamcast was an overnight success, selling 500,000 units in the first 2 weeks and over a million by November. Sega had spent hundreds of millions on the development of the cutting-edge system, which took both graphics and audio to new levels in the video game world. There was just one small problem. By June of 2000, internet pirates that went by names such as "Wildlight" and "kalisto" would have the system's proprietary GD-ROM software completely hacked and bypassed so that games could easily be burned to standard CD-R's. Within 9 months, hackers had compromised what took Sega 4 years to develop. In February of 2001, facing stiff losses and sluggish software sales, Sega threw in the towel, announcing the halt of their flagship product. The Dreamcast could simply not withstand the onslaught of the internet community. The end result? Sega no longer makes gaming consoles. They got out of the business.
So how does this relate to online poker? In the end, online poker is merely software that processes money in a game format. It's not, nor will it ever be foolproof. No doubt companies such as Party Poker and PokerStars have some extremely brilliant programmers on staff to develop safeguards that will battle collusion and robots. The problem is that the internet has potentially millions of programmers just waiting to break those safeguards. Sure, I know what you're saying, "Robot play and outright hacking are two completely different things!" While the concepts may be completely different, the technology involved is not mutually exclusive of each other. The point is not that Party Poker is the same product as the Sega Dreamcast, or even DirecTV. It's that the people willing to compromise one are the same that would attempt the other. And I'd be willing to place a prop bet that more pirates would be willing to take a crack at online poker sites, because money is involved.
Need proof of concern?
When reached for comment by MSNBC, Bob Wolf of TiltWare (the company that licenses the software for Full Tilt Poker), could only muster this on the subject:
"I can't imagine that any good can come of this interview."
He knows...
As for me, I'll continue to focus on the game that gives me the most bang for my buck - real, live poker played in Las Vegas or in the smokey back room of the local VFW. You remember that game, right? The one where you can bust someone's hands if he's caught cheating.
Ok, just kidding, but I feel much better if I can see your face.
[/ QUOTE ]
Direct link to that article here (http://bigslicknews.com/2004/09/will-robots-doom-online-poker.html) - in case it gets moved.
I think that while focusing on 'bots' is important, and it's a legit issue, the real concern should be outright hacking of the software. It is not out of the realm of possibility that internet hackers could figure out ways to see other player's cards, etc. It's always going to be - as refered to above - a cat-and-mouse game.
It's just too easy to dismiss this as silly, or far-fetched, but if guys on the internet could bypass DirectTv's security and many many other technologies, why couldn't they do the same with poker software? There are guys out there who have completely modified their TIVOS and X-boxes, so what makes poker software so special?
Just gets the mind working!