Bots???

I have a question about the so called bots. Are they put in by paradise ( if there is any truth to this) or are they put in by users who run a program that would give them a higher edge? I rembered once Bob Stopak played a computer once and beat it pretty bad at poker in the 80's. I myself like to play poker live and tourney. I play at card rooms but am a little bit worried about these so called bots if there any that the site puts in. My other question is could a computer really have a chance agaist any decent player?? I personally don't think so but this can be opened for discusion. If the site would put ones in they would know what the other players cards are???


Gene

I'd say they do not have the ability to beat a "good" player. However, if you own an online cardroom, insert "bots" in your games, and have control the deal, they could beat anyone without question.

Paradise claims that you only play against other people. Are they telling the truth? I dunno.


A site might use bots for a variety of reasons. They might just use them instead of props, To keep games going in slow times. Paradise obviously has no need to use them for this purpose, but other sites with less traffic might.


A site might also use bots to cheat, either by giving them better cards, or programming them to play with complete knowledge of hole cards and board cards.


I suppose it would be possible for a player to program a bot to play automaticly. If you could write a program to play well enough to win, in theory you could win a lot of money if you had bots playing multiple sites and tables. Also, you could conceivably program bots to collude.


This would not be an easy thing to program. Since all sites encrypt their communication, you would either have to crack their encryption and write your own client, or piggyback on the site's client, and have your program read card images from and pass mouse clicks to the client. Then of course, you would have to write a program to play poker well enough to win. This might not be too hard to do for the lowest limits, given the overall poor quality of play.

Paradise does not allow bots to play, if they know about them, and they have no need for bots to keep the games going.


It is possible to develop bots that would be very difficult for a site like Paradise to detect. There have been at least 2 posts here by people who claimed to have developed bots that played without being detected at Paradise. There have also been claims that some professors at a Swiss(?) University developed bots that played very good heads up poker at Paradise, until they were banned. (It is easier to program a bot to play heads up poker very well then it is to play a regular ring game very well).


There probably are a few bots that are playing undetected at Paradise. How well these bots play depends on how good their developers were at poker. If somebody were to deploy a large number of bots that played well at Paradise, then they would very quickly detect this.


I wouldn’t worry too much about it. There are very few people who are good enough programmers and good enough poker players to develop really good bots.

Just curious Mike, how would they readily detect an unusually high amount of BOT activity?


Jimbo

They state this on their website.


http://www.ultimatebet.com/bonus/hendon.html?ubAffilID=607


"We have real money and play chip tables available and you can choose to play with "bots" at our practice tables before taking on real people"


Excerpt from website