A Bot's Life: 2

[Alobar]

Just an interesting thought I had, how many of the people here arguing that bots are not an advantage are sitting there thinking "I cant wait to get one of these things!!"

Obviously we can argue all day long about weather or not its cheating (I personally believe it is), but the real issue is what will it do to the online game. I come from several years spent playing FPS (first person shooters, quake, half life, etc.) on the Internet, at a very serious level (i've made money doing it). The use of bots was always a concern, and the arguement of "well if your good you can beat it anyway" wasnt valid there, and it shouldn't be valid here. Also, the effect it had on players who wern't any good was very obvious. You beat the hell out of some guy with nothing but your skill, he doesnt think anyone can be as good as you with out cheating, so he cries "bot! bot!" and doesnt play with you anymore. Now what happens when the same thing takes place for money? The fish are so paranoid that everytime they get beaten they only got beaten because the other player was a bot. They stop playing, you lose income. Fish look for any exucse in the world why they lost, thats what makes poker profitable for the rest of us. Whats it going to be like when "bot paranoia" kicks in? I think it will ruin online poker.

I think its a bit egotistical that anyone on this message board thinks they are so awesome at poker they could beat a world class bot. You can't. Thats like saying that because I'm fairly good at chess I wouldnt have to worry about playing "deep blue". Once the AI gets to a certain level, its going to kick your ass everyday of the week. And there will be only a handful of people in the world who could play at close to its level. I hate to break it you (98% of you readers of this board) you're not one of those people. I bet a very high percentage of the people making good money on the internet right now wouldnt be able to make a living playing poker in a B&M, and if you could, it definatly wouldn't be for near as much as your making now.

You ask why I'm afraid to play a bot......It's because I have no illusions about myself and my skill (and thats a quality I'm proud of, it allows me to make money at online poker), and I know that a really good bot is going to take my money in the long run. What scares me the most about bots tho, is that once the fish get paranoid about them, they are going to stop playing online poker. And unless you're one of the very elite (I hate to break it to you, but you're not) you make your money from the fish. How many of you think you could sit at a table with 9 top level pros and make money? (no, im sorry...you cant).

[Wake up CALL]

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And unlike the current alarmists crying "rigged sites", this post exists to confirm there really is a bot playing at PartyPoker.

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Actually it only confirms that someone says they have a bot playing at PartyPoker.

[Stephen Marks]

Hi WakeUp,

I love your posts.

While I did actually write a bot which plays in a lot of places, I never said it plays on Party Poker. At least I hope I didn't, cause it doesn't, and I do not fib much. LOL

I certainly caused a stir with my posts, but I neither think it is immoral to play a bot, nor do I think it is that hard to write a bot to play at lower levels. In fact, the screenscraping part of it was done first on a site which is 10 times harder than other sites to figure out the pixels, hard enough that I almost gave up (it is clear that some sites are making their clients tough for bots to play, others are doing nothing). The poker part is pretty easy for an intelligent programmer who knows how to play poker decently.

Anyway, I had hoped to open a discussion of Poker, like what to do in certain situations, but that seems to have not been the outcome of my posts, oh well.

One of the Alberta people commented on their listserv that he believes that 100's of bots from different people are playing low stakes online. I concur. It is way easy to do. I should probably shut my mouth, but I am certain I could tell when a bot is playing, there are many signs. I could also easliy tell any site that wants how to stop them and/or detect them, but I think the sites have no interest in that. Nor do I....

... in fact, I am sure I should permanently shut up: With 10 machines, each playing 3 games 8 hours per day at $8 per hour, oh that's like $700,000 per year profit. And this is 2/4 at 2 BB's per hour...not bad for a night job.

Stephen (AKA)

[bisonbison]

What seems clear is that over time bots may be very bad for the game of online poker. I think the strategy and programming questions are interesting, but frankly, I find this work appalling, because you are deceiving your opponents, who assume that they are playing against human opponents. The entire profitability of online poker is built, oddly enough, on public trust. Fish play because they feel like they have a fair chance to win. If fish find out that they may be competing against computer opponents, good or bad or in between, they will feel as though the playing field is not level.

Of course people are going to try to develop bots. I trust that, over time, some people will create pretty competent bots that can consistently post a winning hourly rate. These bots will multiply as their creators try to maximize their profits. And I think that their presence will drive away the fish, the players I make my money off of.

[Acesover8s]

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Hi WakeUp,

I love your posts.


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Not only a bot writer, but a sense of humor too.

[trillig]

It's driven me away from playing online for any real $.

This trend will continue...

I guess MILK it until it's destroyed by bots and/or laws.

-t

[Wake up CALL]

Thanks Stephen, I am fascinated by the discussion you have initiated on the subject of Bots.

As you mentioned most poker sites have likely done little to dissuade bot activity. Primarily they have trouble in so many other areas this has a priority so low as to be nearly non-existent. After all, bots are paying customers too! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Keep up the good work and the entertaining and informative posts. I wish you much success and hope you are able to subsist on your $700K income until a better offer comes along. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Bobby Digital]

Ok there were never bots that were that good at counter-strike and other FPS. Any skilled player would be able to destroy a bot. There are way too many variables involved. Bot patters were easy to pick up on and the more you played with them the easier it got. I think it will be the same for online poker. I say bring the bots on.

[fleece_me]

I have serious doubts about the "screen scraping" claims made here.

Using Visual C++, Delphi and C++ Builder for a few years, I can attest there are no "screen scraping" components in any of these enterprise products. Just because these popular IDE's don't have pre-built components and that no 3rd party components seem to exist isn't a complete indictment of these claims, it does mean building such an application is much harder than what's implied.

Furthermore, searching for "screen scraping" in google yields many articles on scraping text from web pages and a very few articles on scraping text from a DOS/console based program. No texts were found referring to graphic or character recognition in this context.

There are entire applications devoted to character recognition, and doing so in the context of a poker application isn't impossible, but calling it anything other than non-trivial for most programmers is inaccurate.

I have peers that work exlcusively in the development of PC games and others that work for an online gaming software company (casinos) and have asked them for their thoughts.

If the original poster claimed he was sniffing the traffic (which is encrypted in most cases) or had somehow decompiled the poker client to get the key to sniff the traffic to and from the poker server and client, or had claimed any other method for ascertaining the flop and how many players are in the hand, his claims would have been much more credible.

The thought that hundreds of people have built similar applications (especially ones that work on multiple sites) does seem impossible based on my experience and research.

[Stephen Marks]

I use the term screenscraping very loosely, as do many people I know in this industry. Screenscraping generically means to me "look at the bytes on the screen and determine what's there". I promise you that I could show the 8s (for instance) from a few sites, all white as "." all black as "O" and all 'color' as "X" (bytes on the screen) [although no x's for spades]. You could look at the representation of the 8s in this printout, and you could tell me which bytes to test for the presence of an 8s (or any other card).

It is tedious and somewhat difficult but not that difficult. At least that's what I think.

Stephen (AKA)