WinHoldem cheaters foiled

[Non_Comformist]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm going to write to complain that they didn't close all those accounts.

Well done! I just wrote them a similar email myself.

Everyone should!!

info@partypoker.com

Adde

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed, I sent mine I strongly urge everyone to send just a brief comment asking the same. A one strike policy would do wonders by shifting the risk/reward ratio.

[mcozzy1]

[ QUOTE ]

How are they cheating?


[/ QUOTE ]
They are cheating because they are violating the terms and conditions on the poker sites. If you check the box that says you agree to the terms and conditions and then you break them, you are cheating.

It's like using a corked bat in a baseball game or taking steroids. The rules forbid it. When you break the rules, you are cheating.

[adanthar]

The bad news is that PP has no way of detecting WinPP (which is basically WH on another machine that acts as a packet sniffer/gateway) and probably never will except through usage patterns.

The good news is that the 'hackers will always be one step ahead' mantra does not and cannot apply here. They may be one step ahead 99% of the time, but the other 1% of the time, they lose all their money and get their accounts banned. This isn't exactly a +EV proposition.

Anyway, the development of a poker bot that does more than lose 2 BB/hour at 2/4 is a couple of years off. The U of Alberta bot comes closest in heads up play, but from what I've heard there's miles and miles to go from that to a full ring viable program.

PS: Out of curiosity, can somebody explain why it seems impossible for any of those people to program WH to win money even at penny tables? You'd think that with a fully customizable bot, the thousand monkeys and typewriters would eventually come up with at least a way to make it stop folding aces on a 875 rainbow flop...I don't get it.

[MicroBob]

That's my general understanding....that these poker-bots are pretty freaking bad.
I agree it shouldn't be THAT tough.

You could use something like Hilger's PF guide (maybe a little tighter if you're not sure whether the Bot can handle suited-connectors or something).

I just think you should be able to run a bunch of If-this-Then-that type of situations.....especially related to pot-odds.
Basically, I'm saying that I also don't understand why they can't come up with a better poker-bot that doesn't fold Aces on a slightly scary flop.
Why can't you just program it to not fold the Aces?


I know chess is an entirely different game....but it's still interesting to compare.
On ICC (internet chessclub, where some REALLY good freaking players play...and some terrible patzers like myself) you can also play someone's Bot.
As long as it is presented as a Bot it's okay.
IOW, they tell ICC they have a Bot that they want to play some humans....they get approved to list their Bot.....and everyone knows that it is a Bot. If you have a Bot on there but don't tell people that it's a Bot (maybe to try to increase your precious little rating) than ICC gets pretty gosh-darned angry for messing with the integrity of the game and their site.

Some of the chess-bots are just terrible and an 8-year old could beat them....others are really really good and I would have virtually no chance of beating them.

As I understand it, the chess-bots have anywhere from a few to a lot of different openings programmed in it so unless you play something REALLY crazy it's going to be 'by the book' for the first 5-10 moves (or possibly longer) and has virtually no chance of making any mistakes in that span

....after that it has the ability to calculate a few million hands a minute and look 3 or 4 (or more) moves ahead and try to determine the best line just based on who has the most signficant advantage in each of the millions of possible positions that result.

There isn't much 'creativity' involved....just massive amount of calculations done extremely fast.

They do pretty decently in the middle-game....sometimes a not-so-strong bot will really struggle in the end-game. In other words, if you can survive to the end-game against some of these bots you might be able to pull out a win (against the weaker ones)....although computers are sometimes used to analyze some end-game situations and I suspect aren't AS terrible in this area as they once were.

Anyway, I think it's all kind of interesting.....and today, the best chess computers are competing at a level roughly equivilent with the best humans.
Just 15 years ago it was a big deal when a computer finally scored an 'official' win vs. an actual grandmaster.
15 years before that it was a big deal when one could program a computer to just play the game correctly.

[MicroBob]

If/when the poker-bots get so good that they actually become a serious factor I think you need to look further than just marathon-sessions to detect them.

The win-holdem programmers can probably just program their bots to log-off for 5-minutes after a 10-hour stretch, log back on, and keep on a-playing....and I bet this would reset the Party-clock on the players (because they may or may not be able to figure out that it doesn't HAVE to be just continuous play).

What about having a pop-up every hour or 2 where you have to type in one of those funny-shaped curvy-words against a funky background. The one's where they say "type in the word as it appears in the box" when you open an account of something somewhere.
I assume this is done to prevent automated programs from being able to read it by scraping the screen....the funky curves in the word mess it up. Is this right?

Anyway, if you want to stay online you have to do that.
I think this might help the Bot problem that we are heading towards.


Or just asking simple intelligence questions....
"What sound does a phone make?"
a. ring-ring
b. banana
c. football

If you answer incorrectly you automatically get logged-off.....and in order to log back-on you have to type in one of those funky curvy-words (to prevent the bots from automatically logging back on).
Of course, this could still cause problems for some of the Europeans who don't speak as much English.


These would be minor inconveniences that I think might become necessary in the semi-distant future in order to keep the Bot-people in check.

Of course, if someone is running the bots on 8 tables while they are sitting there (perhaps they are playing live on 4 other tables) then they will be there to answer the questions or type the curvy-words themselves.

But it should partly handle the issue of running these things non-stop while they are sleeping.

In the very least, I would feel MUCH more comfortable if these (or similar) measures were taken against those who have ALREADY BEEN CAUGHT with the Bots or those who might be suspected (for whatever reason) or those who play super-duper marathon sessions (longer than 24 hours straight perhaps??).

[Hung]

What about having a pop-up every hour or 2 where you have to type in one of those funny-shaped curvy-words against a funky background. The one's where they say "type in the word as it appears in the box" when you open an account of something somewhere.
I assume this is done to prevent automated programs from being able to read it by scraping the screen....the funky curves in the word mess it up. Is this right?

This is a pretty good idea microbob. You know they do this at networksolutions.com If you want to check a whois for a domainname you need to do this too. This is to prevent other people to steal information out of their database. You could for example make a website with a "search" for domainnames and use their database. But now you've to retype the letters that cannot be read by a bot.

You should send your idea to party. I don't think they're smart enough to figure this out by themself.

[mcozzy1]

I was thinking the same thing with typing in the word that the progs couldn't recognize like a lot of sites do.

I'm sure Party Poker is aware of the problem. Their current methods seem to be doing a decent job. I'm sure if the problem gets worse they will have to take measures like that. I'm sure they want to inconvenience the players as little as possible.

It does seem strange though that they don't come down harder on the people they catch.

[GrannyMae]

What about having a pop-up every hour or 2

this will scare the fish. 95% of the players there don't even think of bots and collusion but would begin to suspect things if measures like this were adopted. methinks they thought of this, and rejected it, a long time ago.

[Hung]

this will scare the fish. 95% of the players there don't even think of bots and collusion but would begin to suspect things if measures like this were adopted. methinks they thought of this, and rejected it, a long time ago.

This is also a very good point!
U guys (and girls) really sleep, eat, drink about poker 24/24

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
the other 1% of the time, they lose all their money and get their accounts banned. This isn't exactly a +EV proposition.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since the first part of your sentence doesn't describe what actually happened when that 1% of the time occurred, the second sentence unfortunately doesn't logically follow.