Online Poker Platforms Plagued by Poker Bots
The popularity of poker has increased a lot in the recent years.
Sure, the game has been played for tens of years, but thanks to the internet, and to the attention it received from the media, poker is more popular than ever. However, as in the majority of the cases, technology does not always lead to good things. The same thing happened with the online poker. Numerous online poker players have complained about the odd behavior of some of the players they encountered at the virtual table. It seems that the compliments filed by these players were justified, as PokerStars, the platform where they were playing, discovered that the reason for the odd behavior was due to the fact that the players were not humans, but bots; robots programmed by people to play the game as best as possible in order to make money. They managed to make money, as the 10 bots which PokerStars discovered and banned, managed to make $57,000.The concept of poker bots is quite old, but up until this point they were terrible at the game, and there was no reason in using them.
People would defeat them without having any difficulties whatsoever, but it seems that things have changed a lot. Nowadays, a poker bot can make tens of thousand of dollars if it is not detected in time. Sure, that it is quite rare, but it can happen. The ones in charge with the poker platforms are trying hard to identify these bots and to ban them from the website, but even so, there are cases when they can make a few hundreds or thousands of dollars. Full Tilt was another online poker platform which had problems with these bots. They made an official announcement in October 2010, in which they told people to signal weird behaviors seen in the poker players. Michael Josem, a security manager at PokerStars, said that the website is on a constant search for these bots. When they identify a bot, they ban it from the website, the account is blocked, so the money can not be withdrawn, and the people who lost to it will receive compensation.
You might think that acquiring such a bot is very difficult, but that is not true. These poker bots which are basically designed to scam people and to steal money can be found on the internet without any difficulties. The Holdem Poker Bot which was found on Full Tilt in October can be bought with $130 per year. Brian Jetter, one of the founders of the company which sells this software, said that more than 400 people who bought the bot were banned from the online poker platforms. He also stated that his customers made more than $70,000 profit from Full Tilt, until they got caught and their accounts got suspended. There are more than 600 online poker platforms, and according to PokerScout.com, one of the biggest poker websites, there are many platforms which actually encourage the use of the bots. They have no objection against them, which means that anyone with a bot can play on those platforms in order to make some money.
The poker bots are not excellent players, and they do not win in all the cases. They make mistakes, and they are easily detectable, but according to experts, this will change in the future. There are many software designers who believe that in the following years, when the science behind the poker bots will be more advanced, they might become undetected. Sure, the websites will most likely have a better protection against the bots, but it seems that on the majority of the cases, the ones who hack, or create viruses, or crack games, and so on, are one step ahead of the “online police”. However, there are many people who believe that the bots will not improve. Sure, there are chess bots that can defeat human champions, and there is Watson, the computer which defeated the three best “Jeopardy!” players in the world, but that was different.
Unlike chess, and other games, in poker you can not see the things from the perspective of the opponent or opponents. On top of that, poker relies on luck as well, so you can not be certain about things. You can play the game as best as you can, but if the other player is luckier than you, then he/she will win. These are the reasons why creating a perfect poker bot could be impossible. There are too many invariables to consider, and creating a robot which is able to calculate all the tens of millions of possible scenarios before the hand is being dealt, is impossible. The majority of the bots which can be purchased online are weak at the game, and the ones who created them did it as a hobby. They figured that they could make some extra money by selling them to people who believe that they will make a fortune out of them. Mr. Jetter believes that the poker bots will become very common in the future. He said that more than 5000 people have purchased his software in less than a month.
