Challenge-response test to ensure against BOTs

[Hood]

To ensure against bots joining poker tables, all it would take is for the software to start a challenge response test, such as captcha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha). It would be easy to integrate in to the existing screen of 'taking a seat' on party.

This wouldn't stop against a human open up the table and letting the bot play, but I think this would seriously hamper bot development. If I've got to sit at the screen and load up tables for my bot every time, I'd rather play myself (for the forseeable future, I'm going to be more skilled than a bot). One of the major advantages of playing with a bot is letting it sit 24/7 and handle things on it's own.

This idea could be taken further, and a similar captcha request could be taken when you get ITM.

Thoughts?
(sorry if this has already been discussed)

[Phil Van Sexton]

Yeah, this has been suggested, but I agree it would be a good deterent.

However, I think Party doesn't want to bring attention to the fact that there might be bots on their site. Many of their real customers (ie the donators) are blissfully ignorant of bots, and we'd all like to keep it that way. As discussed already, the biggest immediate threat of bots is that the widespread fear of bots might scare away the fish.

When Party nabbed the Winholdem guys by taking screenshots, I expected them to make a public example of these cheaters to discourage other cheaters. Sort of like when the music companies announced that they would start suing 14 year-old Kazaa users.

I now realize that party is trying to keep their efforts secret.

[david050173]

standard captcha can be answered by machines with about 95% accuracy. Go on slashdot and do a search and you should come up with the berkely researchers work. Humans were only about2%n better than the computer. The human sitting there could play tables(or some number beyond what you coul do by yourself) so there would still be some advantages.

You can't run a bot 24/7 on the same accunt. You would have to set up multiple accounts and so on. Strict account set up would eliminate that at the cost of potentially making it harder for fish to play. It would also prevetn pros from 8 tabling party with would be good for the casual player. Bad for the pros obviously.

[eastbay]

My thought is that Party is going to do what's in their financial best interests, not "what's best for poker" or anything like that.

Starting a system like this is a public acknowledgement of a bot problem, and that is something they will not do unless absolutely forced up against the ropes financially.

In other words, don't hold your breath. The problem must grow exponentially before something like this gets done.

eastbay

[The Yugoslavian]

Is captcha like that word test dealio that Ticketmaster makes me go through every time I want to go to a basketball game?

I'd imagine that would be very hard for a bot to crack (and why Ticketmaster uses it). But I know very little about botting or security, /images/graemlins/wink.gif.

It seems that at least a human would need to be present to interpret and decode the word in order to play.

Yugoslav

[david050173]

I am not sure what ticketmaster uses but captcha is when you have to enter a word from a graphic image where the letters are hard to read (weird backgrounds, skewed letters, drawn a long a curve, and so on). As I said, those can be read by a computer. Obviously it requires more programmer work, but once one person does it and releases the code, you are in trouble. You can devise all sorts of test but you have to be careful about not making your players life too difficult.