(I appologize if this writing is choppy, I had surgery this morning and still am on some painkillers/medication)
There has been a lot of buzz on the internet lately about a couple of automated poker programs on Full Tilt (bots) that people were running and had written a successful program that actually won money at $1/2 stakes. The bots had won about $22,000 collectively over a few months and after someone had discovered they were bots he wrote Full Tilt and alerted the forums where the topic blew up. Everyone was persecuting the group who was running these and telling them how they should be banned for life for cheating. All the programs did were follow simple a playbook with a basic strategy. The person who discovered they were bots was running stat tracking and started noticing that several players had identical stats and never played at the same tables, he also noticed other similarities that aren't really important to the post. After figuring this out he exploited the bots taking pots off of them left and right.
My question for you guys is this. This controversy has caused quite a stir up in the poker community and many people are furious. I thought about it for a while and I really do not have a problem with a player being a bot online. They cannot think freely and if you pay attention to players at your table you can figure them out. If you knew you were playing against a bot you could exploit it. Why not allow bots? They are computers and by far the easiest opponents to play against. The bot seemed tough because he was programmed to be agressive. What do you guys think? Should bots be allowed or do you think they violate the integrity of the game? Poker is a game of people and situations so a computer couldn't possibly keep up with decent players. The other side of this though is that poker is a game built on losers and if computers are taking out the losers then the competition will get better and better until the computers are the losing players (basically driving away the weaker players). I personally have no problem playing against a bot, but let me know what you guys think of this whole situation. Of course, you can always just play live...
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3 comments:
I do agree that i wouldn't mind playing against bots. I think the problem is that many of the players online are simply not good enough to adjust to their table or basically the different styles of the players at the table. I guess it is also unfair that the bot can acquire and apply stats much faster that a human but i also think that playing against a good bot would probably make you better....
To me, the whole idea of using bots seems like cheating, but in reality, I dont feel as though its that bad. If you can't, or don't want to adjust to your players, then you deserve to lose. That's really my only opinion on the situation becuase I don't really care about limit holdem (I'm assuming thats what the bots played?). Bots will never be able to take into account the psychology of a No-Limit play which makes the game so artful. If the bots were playing No-Limit, I don't think it would take me more than a few hours to figure out how they play...
Thats the thing, the bots were playing NL 1/2 and beating the game...people weren't figuring them out besides one person who reported them. They had won thousands of dollars and were consistently beating the NL 1/2 on full tilt.
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