By Sebasdess
In the second half of 2010, FullTilt Poker and PokerStars announced, after a few weeks, they had unmasked an extensive network of robots on their tables. On my side, I do I am never really worried about robots to tables. Not that I deny their presence, on the contrary! It is not uncommon to end up facing a robot when you play online poker!
Take one of the latest promotions of PokerStars concerning the "milestone hands". This promotion was so that each hand "milestone", players who fell on the hand in question automatically earned an interesting price. While some players were just too stupid to see that it is better to push all in with any what hand (these players might $ 5 to win hundreds... and even in losing their $ 5, he still won a prize!), it was still surprising to see that virtually no one in the small limits does not meet the host announcing the price. However, the part was put on pause for many minutes and the host took the time to explain the promotion. A handful of players only interacted with the host. Some might say that the host spoke in English and that some players were probably not able to have a conversation in English, but fact remains that when your party falls paused for many minutes and that a person appearing to be a representative of PokerStars writes in the chat to announce a price, could have to expect that these players say a 'what?' or a simple "me no. speak english", or even to say that a "?" to mean that they do not understand what is happening. This was however not the case: most players were simply not talking in chat.
I am therefore of the opinion there are many robots on the net, and that most of them go "under the radar". Shanky Technologies sells, long a robot for the Hold'Em (for $ 129/year). Many sites simply close their eyes to robots, because they report their interest income. An interview with Brian Jetter, co-founder of Shanky Technologies, has allowed us to learn that more than 400 accounts have been closed by FullTilt during their announcement last October. According to Mr. Jetter, over $ 50,000 were also seized. The Commission considers that its robots related yet $ 70,000 per month in rake at FullTilt. If 400 accounts were defaulted by FullTilt, so we can easily estimate several thousand the number of robots on the poker sites online! And many of these sites will probably not take the same financial decisions than FullTilt and prefer to prevent tens of thousands of dollars per month and scandal instead of entering a low amount of money! It is in this context that Mr. Jetter says that several online game rooms prefer simply to close the eyes to robots.
The existence of online poker robots can therefore not really be denied, and probably that all regular players have faced one day or the other robots. Then why I not care not? Probably simply because these robots are bad. According to Darse Billings, a consultant for PokerStars and FullTilt Poker and former supervisor of the analysis data on FullTilt Poker: "more than 90% of the robots are losing money."
But with so many robots, is it really so difficult to create a? Because I doubt that so many thousands of players have the knowledge to create a robot. It is therefore with this "scientific" in mind question that I started in the creation of my own bot. Without any knowledge in programming. Without any claim of wanting to make a winning robot. All I wanted to do, is to create software that can read my cards, board, buttons, and make an action accordingly.
I thought that I will not get to create a such robot. Yet, in a ten hour of 'work', my robot was practically functional. He was able to read my cards, the size of the mat of all the players, the board, the size of the pot. By investing a few extra days, probably my robot would have been functional at 100%. Would it have been winning? Probably not! Of least not without "tweaking" on my part. And anyway, it wasn't really my goal. I just did 'read' in real-time the situation on the table, without actually using my robot... and this was sufficient so I come to the conclusion that create a robot is a breeze... even for a novice!
Even though, the robots are far from being excellent players, there by less that "monsieur and madame tout-le-monde" may be worn to believe that these robots "can see your cards" or that these robots "cheat". These same players then could completely avoid the online game. This is, in my humble opinion, the dangers of robots.
More and more, we hear about these famous "dangerous robots" in the media. Talk to casual poker players who do not wish to play online and ask them the reasons why they do not play online. They will answer you almost invariably one of these 3 answers: 1. - online poker is rigged. 2. is ' people who sit on the same table for cheating by collusion. 3 - There are robots/software to cheat.
Wanting to push my reasoning, I stumbled upon a theory that I found particularly interesting: internet poker robots are probably as an extension of what we can see in every day life. We have robots in many situations, on a daily basis. For example, how many times do you a phone call to a company... to fall on a response system automated? We can even today, grocery shopping and spend ourselves articles on "automated caisses". Hating vacuuming, I wanted to buy even, lately, "robot-vacuum cleaner".
Robots fascinate us and I can easily understand the interest for a player to create a quality robot that can overcome other robots or the real human players. After all, as such, the robots do not cheat and do not necessarily have advantage over the human being... Of course, some will say that the robot is not subject to the tilt and always plays his "a-game", but human has the power to better adapt to the situation and to be more flexible than a robot. So why not create "authorized robots" tables where players could face other robots? Why not create tables where you can measure your robot to the other? Better yet: why online poker sites do not provide software to automate your game (in whole or in part!) and use this software on predetermined tables?
The question may seem odd, but knowing that bots have already invaded long all gambling sites online (Yes, all online game sites!), there is more talk in the media of these robots, and that casual gamers are already well aware of these robots, why continue to burying its head in the sand and do it as if they did not exist? The designers of robots could work without fear to take their money... and the challenge of creating a winning robot would probably be a strong challenge for many players!
Should we allow this kind of table? What do you think?
Give your opinion on the forum by clicking the following link: "'bots allowed' tables on the sites of online game?"
