blonde poker forum

Loads of ppl getting emails from Fulltilt with refunds (I got $27).  

Speculation on 2+2 that it is connected with botting accounts being closed.  

Some interesting stuff in http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/full-tilt-closing-accounts-confiscating-money-897362/ re bodog traffic being substantially bots and some ipoker skins welcoming bots.

more from 2+2 - this from a bot company

Full Tilt Warning
October 14, 2010
Today, October 14, Full Tilt Poker came out of nowhere and took aggressive measures to stop the use of our poker bot software at their online poker room. There was no warning given to anybody, and this was after years of tolerating us to such an extent that most of us felt they welcomed us with open arms.

To be certain, the use of such software has always been against their “official” terms of service. We all knew that. But for the past few years that part of their agreement was always perceived as being given with a wink. There are hundreds of us who have been active there on a daily basis and the overwhelming majority of us have never heard so much as a peep out of them. If they suddenly decided that they didn’t want us, given the fact that they have allowed us to proliferate unrestricted up to this point, one would expect a warning and a chance to stop using the software.

This was not their approach. They came out of left field and froze all our accounts and have confiscated all our funds. This was a very sudden and calculated move on their part. It would be difficult to describe their actions as anything other than stealing, if you understand the environment.

We were all taken by surprise and are somewhat shocked. We at Shanky Technologies now wish to offer a sincere apology to all our customers who have lost funds in this development. We are guilty of being lulled into submission by the permissive practices of this company and in fact have made statements, even recently, that we felt Full Tilt was a safe room to use our software at. Especially with all the stealth measure built into our poker bots.

Those kinds of statements were never posted publicly on our web site or in our download materials however. We have always made proper disclaimers and given warnings about the risk involved on every page of our website and in our download materials. You are ultimately responsible for the risks you took in using our product.

However in private emails, and in some posts in our support forum, we did make statements that we thought the room was safe from this type of thing, given the long history of tolerance that we have there. And we are very sorry for that. We would never intentionally mislead our customers about the risks involved.

As an example, we get constant requests to support Poker Stars and Party Poker. We always have replied that those poker rooms have no tolerance for bots and as a result we will not even ever attempt to support them. There is no point, as the risk is simply outrageous. So we always focused on poker rooms that are known for high “bot toleration” in their practices.

This has obviously now changed. Consequently we must seriously consider un-supporting Full Tilt poker. They apparently do not want us there anymore, and would rather have our account balances than our business. We see that as an incredibly unethical move on their part and must question anybody who wishes to continue to play there even manually. Look at the people you are trusting with your money. See what kind of people they really are. We would recommend not giving them even one more hand of business, whether you ever used a poker bot before or not.

Who knows, one day they may take all your money because you visited Sharkscope.com or Tableratings.com and they scanned your browser history to find it. (Don’t laugh, the only way they are catching us is by blatant privacy violation and scanning your PC.)

If we decide to add more stealth measures and continue support, we will be issuing stern warnings about their history and the risks involved. Botting there will not be recommended by us again, ever. We think the way forward is to simply support other poker rooms instead, ones that have a more bot-friendly attitude.

As a reminder, we still support at least four other good rooms at the moment, and a couple of these have shown a great interest in having our bots play there. We think that “bot-friendly” is really the wave of the future, and that soon smart operators will realize how much online poker players love tinkering and playing with bot software and will make a “bots welcome” official policy as a result. Yes, we really do believe that or we wouldn’t be in this business. Some of our currently supported rooms are getting close to this in fact.

Some of you will stop botting because of this experience, or at least put it down for a while. But those of us who love this hobby will pick ourselves up and get back in the game at greener pastures. Shanky Technologies isn’t going anywhere. In fact we have exciting things planned in the near future.
Thanks for your understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,

Shanky Technologies team



not sure what to make of that

Cliffs

lol wp doubleup

They may want to be seen to be clamping down on bots

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/full-tilt-responds-to-poker-bot-lawsuit-5686/

Dunno the status quo of that lawsuit though.


Also, in some jurisdictions, if you say in Ts and Cs 'No Bots' then see them, and allow it to go on, you have torn up the bit of the contract that says 'no bots' and you can't rely on it.

Unless it can be proven in court that you saw the bots.

Would be pretty easy for FTP to say 'as soon as we saw the bots we banned them'

But of course this sort of thing would never go to court.

got 17$

be nice to know who the bots were

Lol at the bot makers crying about getting their funds seized.

Gtfo cheaters.

Yes, seems a bit strange them moaning when they knew they were breaking ever rules.  I might not agree with the speed limit on motorways, but if I get caught speeding I can't complain that it's unfair because I got away with it previously.

I've had fun, but now bed.

I can't make up my mind on this, at all. googling gives me answers, but I'm not convinced, not one bit.

we must seriously consider un-supporting Full Tilt poker

"un-supporting"?

If it sounds wrong, & looks wrong, it probably is. I shall need to make some discrete enquiries (or is that "inquiries"?) amongst my learned friends.

Discreet Enquiries!

I think the title of the thread should read "BOTRING spanked at FTP"

A sprinkling of ground bait was all it needed......

But seriously now, this is an important thread. The phrase "we shall be considering un-supporting Full Tilt". Your pedantic grammatical view of that? It just reads & feels all wrong.

Maybe it was written by a bot.

Grammatically it grates, but I assume it's written by someone who does not have English as a first language

The other interpretation of the phrase was that the support of FTP was somehow complict by those the other end....the site itself. However maybe that is reading far too much into it

Yes - they referred to FT's ""official" Terms of Service", which was a pretty com thing to say, too!

and this

As a reminder, we still support at least four other good rooms at the moment, and a couple of these have shown a great interest in having our bots play there. We think that “bot-friendly” is really the wave of the future, and that soon smart operators will realize how much online poker players love tinkering and playing with bot software and will make a “bots welcome” official policy as a result. Yes, we really do believe that or we wouldn’t be in this business. Some of our currently supported rooms are getting close to this in fact.


My bolds.


Potentially a very big story, that I would suggest the sites in question are currently doing their utmost to keep quiet.

Wow. This is going to be huge.

It sure would be hard to guess the identity of that network.

If it doesn't look like a duck. doesn't sound like a duck, and doesn't act like a duck, then it's an unduck.  ;sark;

I poker obviously happy to have losing players bots.

so how can anyone play online poker when it's clear it's not a level playing field?

Just play downhill.

Steve! How are you?

Do NOT worry about "bots", Steve, you would not be at a disadvantage playing against them. It's wrong, of course it is, but the suggestion that they can beat a half-competent player does not wash with me.

They obviously win long term though or they wouldn't be there.

This means that they are just slowly sucking the money out of the games at whatever level they play.

hypothetical and unanswerable question


Where would network liquidity in all bar the top two sites be without them?


Perhaps tacitly accepting them, as implied earlier in the thread, is the lesser of two commercial evils for the second tier networks.

Really? Would the same logic not apply to any regular player? How can a bot play better than a, err, un-bot? Many players can play close to optimally, & that's all a bot does, surely? Since when did a bot's Aces not be susceptible to being beat, just the same as yours & mine?

Not arguing*, just curious.

* Well, I am, I suppose. ;)

Sorry to be a pedant, but you are, I think, implying that Stars & Tilt are "networks", but in the accepted sense they are not.

I think you mean "major networks".

I wasn't implying that. Stars and Tilt are stand alone and represent the first tier.

I include I-Poker in any question such as that I ponder above

tikay many of them employ shortstack strategies that would be identical to the strategies used by "real" short stack players, but they don't ever make mistakes or get tired and can play many tables.  They generally break even or lose slightly and win thru rakeback.

Like regular players, then.

I have been spanking bots for years now.

Any huge rings involved?

If they ban bots, it is rumoured they will use a monkey..... what would you do then?

flame

12 posts and 9 deleted impressive stuff.

Given the bs you are coming out with, hardly surprising. Hope you lose the lot.

You don't have to program one yourself you can buy one off someone else,can you seriously not see why that is bad,ie cheating ??

flame

meh ok then, let's go


It also has an ability in mental arithmetic greater than any human being who has ever lived in the history of the world.
Apart from that, and the other superhuman abilities that you mentioned, it should play pretty much the same game as the programmer.

Except that it doesn't

It does other stuff much worse and overall it stands a little worse in terms of its profitability at a given table.

If tinkering with the programming to make it as good as you can make it is your thing, there's no problem with that. However, the minute you put that bot into a online poker room where doing so is prohibited, you become a dirty cheat. Plz don't do that, it's naughty.

I like robots

hmmmm my hud does things that I couldn't do in the time available to me.  Pokerstove does things that would take me hours. 

The thing that makes a botter a cheat imo is that their software makes a decision (no matter how trivial).

If you then have your bot play on as many different tables as your total rig will allow, alternating your time on the project between tweaking the bot and taking whatever measures you can think of to lower the probability of getting caught, you move from being a dirty cheat to a dirty dirty dirty cheat.

I don't like dirty cheats, hence the flames.
I like dirty dirty dirty cheats even less.

 

The HUD is quite the bookkeeper it is true.

If I tried to say that a HUD wasn't doing anything that the person who programmed the HUD couldn't do in the game then that would be nonsense.

You use pokerstove in game?

So where do you draw the "Artificial intelligence" line?

Russia

no i don't but I could and afaik it isn't prohibited

anyway the point that I am making is that technology that makes your brain bigger isn't the issue.  The machine taking the decision is (eg stngowiz).

http://www.dafk.net/what/

I don't disagree

I was attacking 0800's assertion that there is very little difference to the bot playing and the programmer playing himself.
 
By the looks of things, this is how he seems to justify botting. It's not allowed but he thinks it should be coz bot = him. I argue that's not the case, there's stuff the bot does better and stuff he does better than the bot.

Poker bots are not a form of artificial intelligence.

They have a set of rules which they follow, they will do whatever the previous action tells them is the right thing to do based on other factors including what their hole cards and the community cards are.

They make no decisions on their own and have no intelligence whatsoever whether it be artificial or otherwise. They simply follow a set of rules which have been pre programmed.

If a bot with true intelligence has been developed then it's GG online poker. A truly intelligent bot would adapt to other players strategies over time and as such would be undetectable as a bot. It would play perfectly and would only ever be beaten by the element of luck that creeps in to poker oh so often.

The bots that are about now are very simple. If I could be arsed I could write one myself. It's ridiculously simple and will always win a small amount as long as there are enough bad players about. Stick a truly intelligent bot in there and it would outplay everyone. Even a bot that can beat Kasparov at chess isn't intelligent. It just knows every possible outcome of every possible move it may make next. It isn't intelligence.

The biggest advantage bots have over us normal human beings is the ability to play multiple tables and keep hitting the fold button without getting bored. No boredom = no tilt = no varience. If a bot is a 0.0001% winner then it will remain so forever as long as it can keep playing.

Nor is it possible

A computer the size of the world dedicated to the task would take from now until after the time the sun has run out of juice to solve the game of chess in this manner.

Sufficiently sophisticated chess computers can beat any human player, but they do not do so by knowing every possible outcome, they do not play perfect chess the way a computer can now play perfect draughts.
They do know quite a lot of outcomes though, they look at well over a million a second, and pick the moves that look to be the most favourable from that limited information. With this brute force humans are no longer a match for computers in a game of chess. Computers are not better at thinking, but the sophistication of their programming has advanced to the point wherby, in chess, their brute force at calculation can overcome that disadvantage and kick our asses.

Interestingly, there's a boardgame played on the same board as chess or draughts where the best computers are not yet able to beat the best human players. It's called Arimaa

The rules of Arimaa were designed specifically with the man vs machine, strategic thinking vs brute force working out different combinations battle in mind, and to demonstrate that computers cannot think and plan better than humans (yet).

There is a $10,000 prize for the first programmer that can prove a computer can perform considerably better than the best human players in an official match. It's still up for grabs.

Sorry Tank. I was banking on people not actually knowing that what I said was wrong.

Yeah computers can't possibly know every possible outcome in a game of chess in the same way humans can't.

When they play there's countless millions of combos being processed but they will never be able to do the lot.

Unfortunately for a computer playing against Kasparov it has to work out what will happen if it sacrifices it's queen in every possible way it can. This leads to millions of ways that it will obviously lose but it needs to work out the lot.

Kasparov just knows that sacrificing his queen is stupid so does those 427 billion calculations without even thinking about it. The computer doesn't have this luxury because if that was programmed in then it would no longer be calculating every possible outcome.

No matter how many calcs it did though it still wouldn't be intelligent. It would only be doing a brute force calculation as you so eloquently describe it.

I love you tank. xx

I love you too xx

What you say still tilts me a little as chess computers do "cut off branches" in a combination trees all the time, they would still not be able to beat human beings if they did not do this.
Also, Kasparov still thinks about sacrificing his Queen whenever he has one. Probs looks for that before anything else, the bugger.

Tank might just be the greatest.

did you cut off the branches in your combination trees before you got to all the 'tank sucks' options?

It's likely that to conquer the best humans at Arimaa a computer would need a completely new approach to artificial intelligence.

Looking at all the possibilities 5 moves into the future (5 moves for each player that is, so 10 'half moves') in a game such as chess where you have ~30 options each time. This would involve looking at 590 trillion combinations. Very dooable for a computer.

If instead of ~30 possible moves each time you've got ~20,000 (as in Arimaa) you've got to look at 1.54 x 10⁴⁰ combinations

That's a silly number.

If you want to just look 2 moves (4 half moves) into the future, you'd only have to consider 1.6 x 10¹⁷ combinations
Very dooable for a thousand computers.

Brute force goes out the window though, as 2 moves just isn't enough clairvoyance to overcome superior long term strategy and intuition.

$10,000 is a bit of a shit prize for this task imo. If anyone manages it I'll chuck in another tenner myself.

Hi Tony,

I'm well thanks, how are things with you?

The bots thing doesn't worry me as I very rarely play poker these days. For me, it's very boring & there is too much luck involved.

Would be good to catch up with you soon. Our office has a monthly poker game, which you're more than welcome to come down to. Structure & standard of play isn't too bad & the company is good. The next one is Monday Oct 25th. Would be good to see you if you can make it

Doesn't that apply to all so-called artificial intelligence?

Anyway, my question still stands. Stoves - hud's - trackers - bots....  Where do you draw the line?

I guess a bot would be classed as an Expert System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system). Semantics, shmemantics.

And, it still doesn't answer the question.

You draw the line when the software says fold bet etc.

So if it said  "According to my calculations, if you call here, you will probably lose, but of course, it's up to you"  Or, if it gave you a list of figures that you could interpret to mean the same thing, That would be OK?

sitngo wiz for example isnt allowed during play because it is designed to advise a player in the actual situation they are facing.

pokerstove is prob just the otherside of the line imo as it just provides your equity vs your opponents range, but I wouldn't argue very hard if someone wanted to say they shouldn't be allowed during play.

huds just provide info on player actions, so cant see that they are at all advice tools.

 

So, (And please forgive me, I'm not trying to be argumentitive here, I just thing it's an interesting debate) you use pokerstove, (which by your own admission, is outside the line) but you think bots are wrong?

I put it to you that all these devices are, to a greater or lesser degree, artificial aids, and that the line is different for everyone, drawn using a combination of conscience, fear of consequence, and degree of personal gain as a yardstick.

I don't know about stove but huds and trackers are only any good if the person using them can interpret the data properly, if not they are fairly useless as aids.

Machine guns are only any good if you know how to shoot one, but they are quite easy to master, and they do give the operator a bit of an advantage if used in a boxing match.

no, would be bad


A set of figures like people's stack sizes, the size of the blinds and antes, the size of the pot, the payouts, how many people are left?

Pretty sure it would be counterproductive to the business for a site to ban their own client software so obviously it can't be this.


If you mean something that predicts your equity or something similar for each action raise/fold etc, then that's not going to be allowed.

Something that tells you how often a player is raising pre flop while you've been at the table, it's going to be fine.

Rather than a fine line, there's a decent sized gulf in between these two things imo.

A really good HUD like Holdem Manager that can give you all sorts of info on how often your opponents are doing various things at various junctures is going to be ok still.

A really bad programme that say, lists the 169 holecards and gives each one a number.
It lists the number of your holecards in a different colour depending on where it lies on the list.
The top 20 appear in green and it flashes up saying raise
21-35 appear in amber and it says call
36-169 appear in red and it says fold
It ignores all circumstances and just gives you this info based on where your holecards lie on the list. It's a pretty useless way of playing poker but the program will likely not be allowed.

What I'm trying to say is it's immaterial how much a program helps. Giving you info as to what people are doing when is considered ok at the moment (though datamining this is usually considered bad) and stuff that tries to quantify for you - in game - the merits of folding/calling/raising is not ok.

Pokerstove used while he's not playing.

It's ok to use a bot while you're not playing poker too. You can have it do the laundry.

Where do you stand on check raising? Is check raising immoral? What about bluffing, representing a hand you do not in fact have?

Fundamental judgements of morality of what is permissable in a game based on general external real life sensibilities is a bit silly.
The rules of the game are what they are and most people like to do what you can within these rules to win. The sites allowing you to use a program means it's ok to use that program

My bad, I was referring to his "outside the line" comment.

So speaking of the line, where, precisely, do we draw it?

NB: "It is considered" isn't precise.

So sites that allow bots are fine? (I don't mind bots you understand, I'm just asking)

 

Yes.

Are there any though?

The botters describe some sites as being 'bot friendly' meaning not a lot of their dirty brothers are being caught. It's still in the T&Cs that you can't use a bot there though.

The FullTilt thing was comedy. It was never ok to use a bot on FullTilt, security catches a big bunch of them at once and confiscate their funds and the botters have the brass to moan.

I think you can use pokerstove while playing although I don't because its not really designed for that purpose (and if you need to use it, the answer you're going to get is 40% anyway)

I can't let that one go :)

Poker bots, as you describe there (i'm no expert on them), are a form of AI.

Ok, perhaps not a particulary advanced form of AI, but AI none the less.

The same goes for the chess example. AI.

The computer is given an environment in which a decision is to be made (in this case based on cards, stack sizes, etc) and will make the decision based on it's ruleset. Ok, it might not be learning anything, but machine learning is only one field of AI and isn't required for everything. eg board games where a complete decision tree can be made - the computer can play optimally and nothing the player can do can change that - therefore no learning is required.

sky poker actually have this exact function built into their software

I think I'd pay good money to be present at a healthy debate betwen Tanky & Red. Brilliant stuff, from brilliant minds who can articulate precisely what they think. Most of us can but dream to be half as sharp.

I'm pretty sure Tank just makes most of what he says up tbh but he knows it's totally on another level to our thinking so he gets away with it.I'm on to him I tell you.

Oy! No sensible questions.

Interesting article on bots at The Reg this morning

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/12/poker_bot_confidential/

Seems quite well-informed.

Im really happy this has happened, I am constantly paranoid about stuff like this, I think Iv spent too much time in casino's wehre everyine tells me onine is rigged.

There is a clear difference between HEM/POKERSTOVE/PPT and bots, as has been said generating information on people and using that info on them to benefit your game and improve your desicion making is still dependant on your ability as a poker player, In the games I play when I come across a spot a dont know what to do I could solve the hand and come up with the exact right play for each scenario but it will take over an hour. If I could do that in game then surely I have an advantage that is unfair and I am cheating?

And Bots ARE bad for the game because despite the fact they are b/e or slightly +$ long term they are tkaing up seats which fish should be sat at, and even the very mention of them scares people who would be good value in online pokers away from playing.

Personally I hate HEM, poker tracker, poker (table) ratings and all this stuff and if i woke up tomorrow and they were all banned I'd be delighted. I think my edge would increase if NO-ONE had these aids, however if everyone else is using them and I am not then I am at an mega dis-advantage and thats stupid of me, so hey I cant not use them.

What do people think of data-mining and HH sharing as we're in the what is/isn't cheating comflab? Personally I LOATHE PTR because people can log on there and see me VPIP/PFR etc and watch replays of hands that I've played AND as if that isn't enough people can actually BUY my hand historys, surely using data you haven't personally gathered has to be cheating as well? I thnk the sites should take an active attempt to get it shut down.

If I was Isildur after the hastings match Id have had the heavies round, biggest loads BS every that FTP didn't snap ban both him and sbrugby and give Isildur his $ back.