Poker Bot piece

[Pirc Defense]

Saw this at www.techdirt.com and wanted to pass it along.

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A few years ago, we wrote about how online poker players were often getting assistance from training tools that told them what to do in certain situations. Of course, since then, there's been something of an online poker bubble generating a ton of attention and money. So, with that, it really shouldn't be any surprise that poker bots are becoming much more popular, allowing people to just let the bot play hands for them while they do something more productive (like sleep). While there are lots of arguments about ethics and whether this is legal, that didn't seem to be the most interesting part of the article. In fact, the article seems to have brushed over the most interesting part of the article itself. Apparently, the most popular bot, WinHoldEm, lets users tweak strategies -- and it's the strategies and not the bot that makes someone a winner. In fact, the article suggests it's becoming popular for users to swap and trade different formula sets. In other words, unlike what most people think of when they think of bots invading a game, there is still strategy involved, it's just that the strategy is in tweaking your bot to the best of its ability, which could actually depend on who the bot is playing against (and, assuming other bots are playing, how they're tweaked). So, perhaps the more modern equivalent to sports and games won't be your own feats of strength or strategy -- but how you tweak a computer to play for you.

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It's going to happen, it's just a question of when. Denying this is to overlook nearly every lesson of history.

[mudbuddha]

limit, computers would probably own it up. +ev decisions everytime.. but i still would like to see how they would proram a bot play to play no limit

[Jorge10]

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how they would proram a bot play to play no limit

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I dont think thats possible too many possible combinations, but limit seems possible, I would like to see some of these in action. Also doesnt party ban bots? I heard this somewhere.

[Jorge10]

This article was disturbing, that bastard must be hunted down like an animal and executed along with anyone he sold the program to. I hate to say it, but if this got out to the mainstream media it could really hurt online poker, it would be a huge PR hit.
Bots

[subzero]

I read this article. More reason to play NL over Limit. This is the part that was really disturbing to me:

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"Flick on Team mode and you can collude with other humans running WinHoldEm at the table."


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Hopefully the poker sites can detect when two people/bots are colluding (e.g. two people/bots raising/re-raising with trash to force people out and steal pots).

[Jorge10]

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"Flick on Team mode and you can collude with other humans running WinHoldEm at the table."


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Yes thats what annoyed me about it, it said that the people using the bot werent just using the bot, they were actually sharing information among themselves and colluting. So if you were in a table with 3 bots, you are essentially playing against 3 people that show each other their cards and they can calculate odds better than humans so their plays will be perfect. This annoyed me a lot because it is technically cheating now, it goes from just using a bot to play which while stupid and annoying is not that bad most good players can beat them to using several bots in one table to cheat people out of their money and its a problem.

[Matt Flynn]

The primary collusion would be seeing the other bot-users' hole cards in real time. You could then pull a squeeze play, but the real advantage (and the undetectable one if not ridiculously abused) is always folding the second-best hands within your group.

[Piers]

[ QUOTE ]
limit, computers would probably own it up. +ev decisions everytime.. but i still would like to see how they would proram a bot play to play no limit

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Its much easier to write a No Limt Bot than a Limit one. The key is to always play as short stacked as possable.

[Jimbo]

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It's going to happen, it's just a question of when. Denying this is to overlook nearly every lesson of history.


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You mean like the Nazis, 911, slavery or the Boston Tea Party? WOW! This may be more serious than I thought.

[Pirc Defense]

[ QUOTE ]
You mean like the Nazis, 911, slavery or the Boston Tea Party? WOW! This may be more serious than I thought.

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You're way off. I mean like the guy that said, way back in the 1800's, that everything that could be invented, already had. Don't be that guy, Jimbo.

Or the brainiac that very vocally proclaimed that a computer would never beat the best human chess players? You're not THAT guy, are you?

Then don't act like it.