Neverlose

[J_V]

This is probably the wrong forum, but I feel like most of the posters here would be able to help me understand this issue better than any other forum. I apologize for the blatant forum abuse.

I'm not sure what the final verdict is on the Pokerstars player Neverlose. He seems as bot-like as possible and plays at the highest limits. I'm sure other people would no more about this player than me. Before I ask any questions, I would like to list the reasons why this player looks to be a bot:

1. Plays a ridiculous amount of hours at ridiculously long stretches.
2. Multitables short 100-200 and 75-150 omaha
3. Hardly ever talks.
4. Never rebuys until he is bust. Will play a 100-200 hand with $200 dollars
5. Plays heads up very slowly (much like other bots)

I am very annoyed at this situation. Why is Pokerstars doing letting this player play on their site? I know I'm not the only player that thinks this player is not a human? Are they ignoring the obvious signs?

Can we assume their are other very strong short high limit bots at other sites?

Does anyone here who knows something about the situation not believe this player to be a bot?

Would it be harder to program a bot to beat shorthanded omaha or holdem? It seems to play omaha8 very badly.

When I played it heads up it seemed very beatable, but I'm a newbie at short omaha8.

And lastly, would you play with the bot?

[vector2]

A couple people finally saw him talk a couple times but I guess that's hardly conclusive. The better question is are there any bots out there that even good enough to sit higher limits? To my knowledge, the "best" bots out there are barely good enough to break even at 2/4.

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
4. Never rebuys until he is bust. Will play a 100-200 hand with $200 dollars


[/ QUOTE ]

All other points don't really sway me one way or the other except this.

Even an idiot should know you need to have more than that on the table so you don't screw yourself if a good hand comes along.

However, wouldn't a highly sophisticated bot who can beat 100-200 short handed be able to click a rebuy button? Or at least just put $20,000 on the table so he wouldn't go bust except for during a horrible run.

[vector2]

I don't think #4 is truly a compelling point just because of the sheer number of stars 100/200 players who play with less than a thousand and only reload when they're about to bust or only have a few bets left.

[glen]

yeah, but this was not the case with neverlose. He would often have like 70k spread out over 3 tables, and clearly more in his account. so say one day he started playing 3 tables with 10k each, then a few hours later he would have 17k on one, 8500 on another, and 200 on a 3rd, but he would not reload even though he had plenty of time to just click the dealer button for more chips. . . so then he might double up once or twice by going all-in and have like 800 on the table, THEN he would reload. bizarre. . .

[BusterStacks]

As far as thwarting the use of bots on an online site, this is next to impossible. I don't know how much you guys know about programming or whatever, but let me say a couple things.

How bots are avoiding detection, is by running the actual bot on a seperate computer. The first computer runs a small program that gathers information and makes moves, then uses a small program called "push" to send it via TCP to the second computer which then calculates the appropriate move. The first computer then uses a complimentary program called "pull" to get the data from the second computer. Working with graphics and menus is obviously a small hurdle at best, considering you can use window locations to reference pixel placement in any given screen.

Furthermore, poker bots are written in C, which as you probably know, so is a lot of other stuff. Needless to say, the C language has no problem running calls to other programs (PokerTracker, SQL, etc.) Additionally many modules are available that could be used to further strengthen the tools available to the bot, including database handling, biased and unbiased number generators, as well as rudementary dialogue generation.

It should be painfully obvious that the architecture of a particular bot is not difficult whatsoever. What becomes difficult is the coding. Fortunately, the posters over at the Winholdem forums are absolute morons who haven't a clue about the C language and have a tough time even getting the syntax correct.

The thing I am most worried about, is the people who don't post. I can't imagine a decent programmer taking the time to reply to the absolute stupidity of the Winholdem questions, but I do not doubt they are out there. I think a 2-person team involving a great poker player with a basic knowledge of program structure, and an expert coder would be enough to produce a bot capable of beating any given full ring games.

Those of you who think that a bot cannot beat a human are absolutely wrong. We all know poker is a game of incomplete information. The very notion that given the same set of criteria a human can outplay a bot on even a single move is absurd. Granted this may be hard for some to swallow, but let's think about this logically.

1) a computer has every hand it has ever played against you or seen you play, as readily available as you can rememver the previous hand.

2) Therefore, as you continue to play against a bot you are constantly losing ground. Granted you can switch up your play but for certain statistics you are always approaching a percentage that represents your decisions. So while I don't mean to suggest that a bot can perfectly play you after a while, it will be erroding various edges you would potentially have.

3) For basic pot odds needed to call, a bot is always 100% correct given a correct set of rules. Can you really say that even Sklansky is always 100% correct on this? What about 4-tabling or 8-tabling. It's all the same to a computer.

For those of you who still refuse to believe bots will become a reality, I very much would like to know why you think so. HOW do you plan to outplay a bot? It's not a question of IF... it's when.

[mike l.]

i dont get it. the bot sucks but you dont want him on their anyway? or is the bot good at hold em and only sucks at omaha?

[J_V]

Supposedly neverlose is very good at short holdem and seems bad at omaha to me.

[Diplomat]

I think the point goes beyond neverlose. IMO the point is that someone can build a bot that can beat 100-200 online AND the site which it plays on is apparently indifferent to the bots' existence.

-Diplomat

[J_V]

Yes, exactly. Bots shouldn't have free range on poker sites no matter how good or bad they are.