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poker-bots for online poker

andyandy

anthropomorphic ape
andyandy
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
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this is my first post in the computers section....so i dont know if this will fly, but here goes....:D

i play some poker online - although it seems to me that it's pretty open to exploitation - player collusion seems inevitable on the higher limit tables.....

but my question was about poker playing bots.....is the technology out there already for a bot to beat an average-joe player?
I also play chess, but would never play that for money online because the best chess programs (Deep Blue/something.... ?) can beat the best human player....

if the technology isnt already out there i would imagine it's gonna be within the next few years - which begs the question, is online poker in the ****? As soon as poker-bots are widely available then that would be curtains for a multi-million dollar industry....
 
Some people claim it's heading that way quickly. But then we have to factor in the number of gullible people wanting easy money... :) I would guess that a computer program knowing the exact odds of all hands and recording the playing pattern of the other players would beat an average player. Not to mention the "poker-donors".

There are ways to combat bots. I used to play an online game where (as in many other games) you have to do hours upon hours of hard and repetitive work to increase your skill level. So bots are tempting and have been used. (Not by me, of course.) The way they deal with it is to break up the game at random times with something that requires human interaction. (Maybe a little text recognition or a really simple quiz.) If a player repeatedly fails to respond like a human supposedly would, he is banned.
 
Ririon said:
There are ways to combat bots. I used to play an online game where (as in many other games) you have to do hours upon hours of hard and repetitive work to increase your skill level. So bots are tempting and have been used. (Not by me, of course.) The way they deal with it is to break up the game at random times with something that requires human interaction. (Maybe a little text recognition or a really simple quiz.) If a player repeatedly fails to respond like a human supposedly would, he is banned.
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Yes CAPTCHAs work but mostly becuases there is a limit to how hard the bot programers are prepared to work. The problem is that they get on the nerves of human players as well.
 
yeah...i was thinking of how they could prevent a bot....but any kind of required "interaction" - eg. typing a reply etc. would exclude non-english speakers,
and don't we already have AI bots who can handle simple questions? They could be incorporated into the program.....
and even if they managed to require some interaction that was beyond the means of the bot, it would just require that the person stayed at the computer to watch his bot in action....

it seems that poker is the ideal game for a computer bot to handle - you could incorporate poker-tracker style data collection software into it to be able to adjust play to each opponent.....

I read (in some poker magazine) that there's already been tests of poker bots on a heads-up basis - where they can more than hold their own against some top players....
 
geni said:
Yes CAPTCHAs work but mostly becuases there is a limit to how hard the bot programers are prepared to work. The problem is that they get on the nerves of human players as well.
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That problem was reduced in the game by integrating them into the gameplay. The random events are things that happen "in the game". Everybody hated the first attempts at this, but the integrated ones with small rewards are fun and breaks up monotony. On a gam(bl)ing site where everybody has their own money account, you could have little mini-games. Free games popping up at random times. You can win nice little amounts (based on how much of a high-roller you are), but act non-human and you're out. Free idea. No guarantees. :)
 
Word to the wise; if you're NOT cheating, don't play poker on line for money.

The face-to-face game is a far, far different game.
 
The point of the bot is to win money not to give the human time off. Someone could sit and monitor their bot army to deal with any verifications.
 
Anti_Hypeman said:
The point of the bot is to win money not to give the human time off. Someone could sit and monitor their bot army to deal with any verifications.
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Yes but it puts various limits on how bots can behave. It kills a certian type of but threat. Then you move onto stage two of your defences. Block any open proxies you can find and put a fair bit of effort into searching for them then figure out the patterns that let you tell humans from bots.
 
There's still a problem with poker-bots... they must both beat the average player *and* be undetectable by better players. Recently on PartyPoker a group of poker players figured out that a certain player was really a bot, and in fact that there were ~20 online with exactly the same play style. Once you know a player is a bot, you can exploit it.
 
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