2+2 thread on bots at the PP $22 speeds

[taipan168]

Has anybody been following this? Scary stuff if it's true.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...0&fpart=1&vc=1

[vqc]

i was sitting at table today with a nother multitabler who was chatting about bots.
mr table chatter was the worst player at the table and probably scared off the fish.

Its funny becuase I have notes on some of hte "bots" (not saying that they arent or that they are) and they all suck.

[Scuba Chuck]

i was sitting at table today with a nother multitabler who was chatting about bots.
mr table chatter was the worst player at the table and probably scared off the fish.

Its funny becuase I have notes on some of hte "bots" (not saying that they arent or that they are) and they all suck.

Too bad Poker Prophecy doesn't agree with your assessment.

[vqc]

i was sitting at table today with a nother multitabler who was chatting about bots.
mr table chatter was the worst player at the table and probably scared off the fish.

Its funny becuase I have notes on some of hte "bots" (not saying that they arent or that they are) and they all suck.

Too bad Poker Prophecy doesn't agree with your assessment.

this is a joke right?

[Scuba Chuck]

i was sitting at table today with a nother multitabler who was chatting about bots.
mr table chatter was the worst player at the table and probably scared off the fish.

Its funny becuase I have notes on some of hte "bots" (not saying that they arent or that they are) and they all suck.

Too bad Poker Prophecy doesn't agree with your assessment.

this is a joke right?

I had a friend check. The wost one is 35% ITM. All of the rest are 40+% with at least 250 recordings. And some are as high as 44%.

[vqc]

i was sitting at table today with a nother multitabler who was chatting about bots.
mr table chatter was the worst player at the table and probably scared off the fish.

Its funny becuase I have notes on some of hte "bots" (not saying that they arent or that they are) and they all suck.

Too bad Poker Prophecy doesn't agree with your assessment.

this is a joke right?

I had a friend check. The wost one is 35% ITM. All of the rest are 40+% with at least 250 recordings. And some are as high as 44%.

I just found it funny that a 2er would trust prophecy.

Nonetheless, if we can find bots to make ITM at 40%, then I just suck.

[Scuba Chuck]

Like here's a link

[Phantaroth]

Hmmm..

If this turns out to be correct, which it seems to be,

How widespread of a problem do you believe this currently is? And if its going to get worse, wtf is going to happen?

This is pretty scary.

Im guessing bots don't play at the 2$ SnGs tho, not enough money in that.

Good thing im micro

[taipan168]

One of the 200+ replies mentioned that it would be relatively easy for PP (and PS for that matter) to make it difficult if not impossible for them to screen scrape by randomly changing the decks. I know nothing about screen scraping technology but if this is true it seems like a (relatively) easy fix.

[Fnord]

This was inevitable.

[vqc]

This was inevitable.

if it makes u feel better fnord, and i know it will, they play better than I do.

[Scuba Chuck]

It's official. Weeeeeeeeeeeee

[ilikeaces86]

I dont really care if I am playing vs bots.

[vqc]

I dont really care if I am playing vs bots.

good for u!!!!!!!

[MAX]

That is an eye opener. I have hardly played at all lately and recognize allmost all of the bots. Glad that I am now armed with the knowledge of what to look for and how to beat it. They may actually increase your EV at that particular table (if you identify them and min raise their blinds constantly), but this is awful for the game.

[DogOnMySide]

How depressing. These are the sort of things that will ruin online poker, unless the industry can work out how to stop it.

I think the sites have a policy of "don't tell people about the cheats we stop, as it will make people think there are a lot of cheats"

I wonder if a better policy is "name, shame and ban all cheats"

Perhaps someone enterprising might set up some sort of business running a database of known cheats, and the details they supplied to sign up... which all poker sites could add to for free and access for an annual subscription fee.

I assume there's no word of them migrating to Stars?

[Scuba Chuck]

I assume there's no word of them migrating to Stars?

What makes you think they don't already exist?

[biondino]

Obviously I can't read that whole thread, but going through it a bit, it seems people are banging on about all these botsd being the same player. Well, no - they don't have to be the same player at all. They are only a computer program, so they can be circulated (commercially or otherwise) and used by different people anywhere in the world.

Second thought - this 95% of stack raise - there is a possibility that the reason they do this is in case an opponent times out on the flop - any bet from them, no matter how small, will achieve a fold if the other guy times out. Possible?

[DogOnMySide]

Yeah, possible

The fact is, all of the bots display similar characteristics (e.g. they always pick the same seat, their location is always IN CAPITALS etc) which suggests they're not being created by a load of different people.

I imagine it's someone trying to make as much cash as possible in the short time until he gets shut down and has to move on.

I wonder if the fact that Stars auto-assigns your seat randomly makes any difference to how easy it is to run a bot?

[taipan168]

I asked PS today what they were doing to ensure that their players were all real people and not bots. Their first response was the bog standard "our shuffle is fair, we don't have house players, we make money only through the rake" blah blah blah. Then I sent them the link to the 2+2 thread and they said that their "supervisor" (Lee Jones?) would respond in a few days. Let's see what comes back.

[boost]

,their location is always IN CAPITALS etc)

your location on PP is always in capitols. I had two guys at my table named jbs and jsb each with 4 numbers following the letters, It was kinda weird, but I didnt notice any collusion, and they had diff locations, but then I noticed they were both caps. But then I noticed mine was too, and everyone elses .. heh.

[Fnord]

This was one of the reasons I chose to focus on learning deep stacked NLHE.

LHE is the next most easily solved Hold'em variant.

[andy-akb]

I was checking out the forums over at www.winholdem.net and realized that while a lot of people may be using bots, most arent profitable. The ones at the $22s seem to be, probably because speed SNGs are very mathematical. It hurts poker whether or not the bots win or lose because it scares the fish away, I just find it funny that most of the people buying these bots dont make money. In their FAQ it says that a profitable formula [what hands to play, how to play them, etc.] is worth atleast $5k. So while it may not affect our profit directly as most of these bots will be bad, its still something we shouldnt turn a blind eye to.

[zenbitz]

I believe it.
It's actually pretty trivial to write a bot. In fact, I heard about on-line poker from a guy who was thinking of writing one. He already wrote the screen scraping part. Then I pointed out that since PP dumps the hand live to your harddrive, there was no need to actually screen scrape. (Don't worry, he didn't write one).

Also, this was "back in the day" when on-line players were really, really bad. Like .50/1 LHE bad. They are much better now, so the margin in thinner.

The wild part is that how could Party NOT know they are bots? They don't even chat randomly! They don't even randomize their seat, or jump tables, or log out 8 hours a day to "sleep". That leads me to conclude that perhaps they are pseudobots. I.e., not a pure AI, but someone is actually just multi-accounting with helper software (still against the rules). But more likely they are bots and PP is just accumulating evidence, but is not so quick to jump to the conclusion.