Poker Bots - Quality information

This is not just another random 'omg bots' thread. Here is a very detailed blog about poker bots and information that can be used to make online poker more fair for the players.

http://www.mattmazur.com/category/poker-bot/

This is a nice comment thread about the blog:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=657632

I found it quite an interesting read and has a lot of pertinent information. It is up-to-date as of June 15 2009 which is also nice (not some random article from years ago that is useless).

That's really interesting stuff - I just read all of his blog posts. I think the biggest worry about bots is that their existence puts off fish rather than anything else.

it really was a good read

the most interesting thing is that the bot can *profit*. You'd think it'd be really exploitable, but maybe the people there are just that bad

On June 16 2009 04:58 Oly wrote: I think the biggest worry about bots is that their existence puts off fish rather than anything else.

Agreed, it fits the 'online poker is rigged' belief perfectly. Hopefully something like this never makes it into mainstream news.

the weird part is that the bot played HU sngs
why wouldn't he just make it play FR ?

HU is a more perfectly informed game and can make more perfect decisions i guess

Its easier to figure out 1 guy rather than a whole table of guys. There aren't as many variables when playing 1 person, and the complexity and interactions go crazy the more people there are.

I see there's another Paul Graham fan on LP.

That guy is lacking business intelligence. If you read his emails it's clear he needs the attention and wants people to say "you're so smart".

He should have told pokerstars "My bot made 500$ in september 2008. Hire me as a consultant and I'll provide you with my algorithms and analysis"

On June 16 2009 09:28 royalsu wrote: That guy is lacking business intelligence. If you read his emails it's clear he needs the attention and wants people to say "you're so smart". He should have told pokerstars "My bot made 500$ in september 2008. Hire me as a consultant and I'll provide you with my algorithms and analysis"

I don't think that's the case, and I can't tell if you're being serious or jesting when you say "he should have told pokerstars..." but it earns a pretty big fail either way imo

anyway I spent an hour or so reading his poker bot blog and some of his other blogs and it was pretty interesting, actually (lol if you had AOL back in the day, with progz and appz, his Meridian blog entry was fairly nostalgic and enjoyable)

I am being serious night. He has a legitimate asset that he's giving away for free. Instead of waiting for a reply from them (he mentioned it was a week or so since the last email), he proceeded to give away free information to them. He already got his funds seized and I don't think pokerstars can even (or wants to) prosecute him in court. He now has the upper hand imo.

Ex-thieves, ex-hackers have started lucrative businesses consulting from the very people they steal from.

Basically I think what happened is he spent a shitload of hours on this project and didn't want it to go to waste. He wanted recognition so he emailed stars, then blogged about it so that everyone knew what he was doing.

But if he really wanted to help, he never should have blogged about it so that other cheating bot creators would know the strengths and weaknesses of his bot. He would have quietly marketed it to stars, partypoker, fulltilt, etc..

wow, what a good read. I wonder how much does a poker bot affect the whole community.

lol... if you can't beat a bot, quit poker

On June 16 2009 10:24 royalsu wrote: Basically I think what happened is he spent a shitload of hours on this project and didn't want it to go to waste. He wanted recognition so he emailed stars, then blogged about it so that everyone knew what he was doing. But if he really wanted to help, he never should have blogged about it so that other cheating bot creators would know the strengths and weaknesses of his bot. He would have quietly marketed it to stars, partypoker, fulltilt, etc..

On another note.. sounds like pokerstars have the right person in charge of bot detection.

read it all, seems to go heavily inline with some of the poker sites out there. cake network for example, there almost was a few people who played hours on end without chat making the same standard robot like plays

On June 16 2009 07:07 Zalfor wrote: HU is a more perfectly informed game and can make more perfect decisions i guess

Well i dont think so, hu is more about adaptability/exploit weakness and i have no doubt players like Fayth's caliber would totally destroy any bots hu as we speak . Bots would probably excell in sngs where a solid push/fold strategy is primordial, not to speak about perfect ICM calculation on the spot and massive multi-tabling. Poker is not like chess and i doubt it can be solved in the next 50 years. And even then there will still be live poker.

That was a good read, thanks for linking it. I can very much identify with his motives/drive for this type of thing, so it was especially interesting to me.

I play PLO... any bot in PLO would get completely ripped, HU,SNG,FR or no matter what.

Low stakes SNG's and LHE HU is the best for bots. Also i suspect a game like FR razz a bot can play pretty close to perfection.