Internet Paranoia
 

Hi,
Can somebody ease my paranoia on about the following issues ?

1) There has been alot of talk going around about poker bots. How common are they ?. If Somebody could design a bot that just played well enough to beat a few dollars an hour out of the low stakes tables they could just run it 50 times at many different places and make reasonable money right ?. Is this a valid concern.

2) I've seen a few sites float around selling systems which supposedly allow you to cheat at internet poker. The fact that they sell for $49.95 I think pretty much proves they can't be much good. However they do boast a method that allows you to see other players cards.

Is it possible they is some kind of security exploit in certian versions of windows that allows you to obtains another playes ipaddress and then gain access to their PC to view the output of the poker software they are running ?

Thanks for any advice.

Mark

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

1) not yet. none that are good enough to win consistantly anyways. but will become a problem soon.

2) no. they lie.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

1) Do a search. There's been a lot of bot discussion recently. The Poker sites are taking steps to crack down on bot use. And it's debatable whether anyone has programmed a truly effective bot anyway.

2) Apply a little common sense. If someone had a program that actually worked and could see everyones hole cards, they'd be using it themselves to make thousands of dollars each day. They sure as hell wouldn't be selling it to random people for fifty dollars.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

1. I wouldn't worry about this, at least for now. As the two previous responders said, at the moment, the bots (if any) just arent good, nor do they properly work. Even if they did exist, as hard as the Party Network is cramping down on external program use, this would be a massive story. Don't worry about bots.

2. Most of these are scams. However, there are a couple of programs out there that are legitamite, but not able to see the hole cards of your opponents. Two programs are out there to my knowledge that simply assist you with odds/ chances of winning, etc... these programs aren't "cheating" per-se, but they are a crutch that I highly reccomend against using. Although they may help you at the VERY beginning while learning, ultimatley, they will slow your learning process down. Programs that can see other peoples cards however during play simply don't exist, and if they do, they don't work well at all.

3. Finally, its not possible to gain access to a person's PC, then read thier card output before it is even stored in a hand history file(after the hand is ocmplete)

All things considered, online poker is trustworthy, but you should find a site that you feel comfortable with, and trust... most of them are great. You just have to find the ones you like, and trust.

Hope this helps.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

There was a guy in the late 70's/early 80's who made an electric card counter for blackjack. It worked. He was selling them for 10,000 dollars a piece. If someone could make a program that could read other players hole cards it wouldn't be sold openly and it would cost a small fortune.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

[ QUOTE ]
If someone could make a program that could read other players hole cards it wouldn't be sold openly and it would cost a small fortune.

[/ QUOTE ]

SMALL fortune?

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

But it does bring up a different point that OTHER players who see this will have just another reason to not trust the games if they actually even partly believe this idiocy.

Why on earth doesn't party stop these idiot-spammers?

They really don't seem THAT concerned about it and that's kind of surprising because the general public's trust of the legitimacy of the games there is at stake.

Just have one CS rep view the CHAT ONLY (no dealer summaries) from 8 different tables. The instant they see a spam....BAM...that person is banned.

They don't have to watch the actual tables for the different chat. Just write a program that brings the chat from a random sampling of tables all to the same screen. They won't be able to follow any conversations but that's not the point. Just watch for the spam and nail them.

It couldn't cost them that much to do it......and I would think that ensuring the public's trust in their games and disuading the rumors that such programs actually exist would make it worth it for them.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

Very good suggestion, Bob, but Party is too lazy to implement that.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

How about making it so only players who have bought in to a real money game can chat...This at least elimintaes some spam...I want to find a way to elimintate the spam that cames directly from Party too!!!!

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

Er, Party might have 4 or 5k tables open at once. Hiring 500 people to look at 8 tables each is somewhat impractical.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

They are too lazy to fix their software problems, much less chase after spammers.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

[ QUOTE ]
Er, Party might have 4 or 5k tables open at once. Hiring 500 people to look at 8 tables each is somewhat impractical.

[/ QUOTE ]
They wouldn't need to monitor every table, because each spammer presumably spams many tables -- you only need to catch them once.

The real question is, after Party bans a spammer how difficult is it for the spammer to open a new account with a different name.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

Bots:
As a poker player and programmer, I can tell you that writing a bot capable of beating even low limit holdem would take hundreds of programmer hours. This doesn't mean it can't be done. However, sites can take counter-measures. I believe (based on some posts here, not on personal experience) that Party is already using some counter-measures: A popup with a graphic containing distorted text thet the player is required to enter in an input field to continue playing. This is very difficult for a computer program to do, but easy for a human being. There is at least one commercial bot program available called winholdem. I believe that this is one of the programs that will get you banned from Party, and their client is capable of scanning running processes, and maybe hard drive files, for programs that violate their terms and conditions.

Programs that let you see other players cards:
These programs work (well sort of). What their spammed promotions don't tell you is that they let you see other players' mucked cards, after the hand is over (only if the player called on the river). This is useful information, but of course not nearly as useful as seeing other players' cards while the hand is in progress. By the way, this information is already available to you on many sites by looking at the hand history. On Party, you can bring up the hand history while you are playing by clicking the link in the upper right hand corner of the table window. These programs may make it more convenient to get that information, but they really don't give you anything you can't get if you know how already. The way the sellers of these programs advertize them indicates that they are scumbags, so I wouldn't do business with them even if I found their product useful, but that's just me.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

I'm not sure that Pary isn't already banning the spammers. It seems like every time I see one of these messages it's under a different user ID. I think Party is banning them, but they keep creating new accounts. Of course, with a little ingenuity, they should be able to do it faster, but, after all this is Party.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

[ QUOTE ]
How about making it so only players who have bought in to a real money game can chat...This at least elimintaes some spam...I want to find a way to elimintate the spam that cames directly from Party too!!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but that would also eliminate one of my favorite "side" activities while playing poker: Verbally abusing the railbirds that ask for a "loan" of $50.

Re: Internet Paranoia
 

Pokerbot.com has said they have away around the pokersites detection software. They say if you use two computers, one with their software on it and another with the pokersites software on it, the pokersites cant detect it. Its not hard to get the 2 computers together for this.
Just my two cents. This info is on their site
Not paranoid, just came across it and it surprised me