If your playing certain sites at the lower limits for instance ultimatebet or paradisepoker, chances are your playing against bots. Other sites such as FullTilt and PokerStars have taken an aggressive approach to finding and banning accounts that have proven to be operating bots.
What is a poker bot? in simple terms a “bot” is a program that its creator has set parameters for, it can sit and play for hours upon hours. The idea being that a computer program will never play angry or tilt. Since ABC poker will work at the lower limits a correctly programmed bot can be very profitable.
Is this cheating? this is a hard question to answer – a program can only do what its programmer has told it to do – therefore you are playing against the programmer. While it can be profitable at lower stakes it is very un-profitable at higher stakes where ABC poker is thrown out the window – If you are playing against me with a set plan of raising in this spot and auto folding in that spot you will be exploitable and your tendencies would be found very quickly and used against you. I would never report what I thought to be a bot because it would be way to juicy!
On the other hand – bots are not playing at my level for the reasons I explained however they are chewing away at the lower stakes and the real threat of the “bot problem” is the negative publicity.
Joe is easily scared away! I hate to use the term “fish” because it has been made such a derogatory term. I prefer to say your “average joe” Joe works a decent 9-5 job and is highly intelligent, He enjoys 1-2 hours of poker every other night and while he realizes that he loses he enjoys the game and the money does not mean much to him. Joe does NOT like the idea that he could be playing against a computer and it scares him, It also explains why he has lost (a convenient idea for him that is not based on reality) Therefore he going to quit playing.
The online poker community is fed by guys like Joe at every level, they feed each other the occasional win and in the end the money is fed to those of us that live off it – the sharks.
It is in our best interest (those who make their living off the masses of joes) to look out for them – They don’t mind an honest game of man against man. But when they are deceived into thinking it’s a man when in reality it is a program, then that becomes cheating.
Things like this have often reminded me of playing in the card rooms in the earlier days. There was a time when you could sit at a table in a card room in Phoenix and be playing against a minimum of 3 colluders. At first I was completely blindsided and had no idea – Then it started to ad up and a long time professional let me in on the “crews” that worked these rooms. Once realized I was able to take advantage of their plays. In the last few years card rooms have started banning these teams of colluders however it still go’s on but nothing like it used to be.
For some unknown reason people have turned a blind eye to pokers shady past. I think that because tournaments have been aired on ESPN people are actually buying into the idea that it’s a sport. Poker was never a sport. Poker is about money and only money. The online rooms have actually done more in the way of preventing and cleaning out colluding and cheating than any brick and mortar casino has ever done.
Online rooms need to handle bots in the same way they handle colluders whether it truly is cheating does not matter because the Joes think that it’s cheating – So OUT WITH THEM!
Popularity: 3% [?]
)
