It’s not every day that poker garners the attention of the mainstream media. On Monday, the New York Times published a rare online poker article focusing on the proliferation of bots.
For those of you new to the game, “bots,” short for “robots,” are computer programs designed to play poker automatically at the virtual tables. All of the actions that a bot takes – bet, raise, call, fold, etc. – are pre-determined based on the play that has already occurred during a hand. Whatever the programmer has coded into the bot is what it will do. Gabriel Dance, the article’s author, explains this early on in the piece.
The article begins with a discussion of how 36-year-old professional poker player Bryan Taylor spotted three bots in his games on PokerStars, the world’s largest internet poker site. He became suspicious because the three “people” had disturbingly similar playing styles.
While it was not explained how Taylor figured out that it was more than a coincidence, one can deduce that he likely used hand tracking software to analyze their statistics and compare them to each other. In July, PokerStars agreed with Taylor’s assessment and shut down the bot accounts. The article also mentioned Full Tilt Poker’s October announcement that it was going to come down hard on bots.
Perhaps the most interesting portion of the Times piece was the discussion of bots with Brian Jetter, Co-Founder of Shanky Technologies, one of the foremost bot sites. According to Jetter, Shanky Technologies has sold more than 5,000 licenses of its Hold’em Bot software in three years. Licenses sell for $129 per year.
Jetter is completely unapologetic in the article, feeling that his software benefits the poker rooms. In response to Full Tilt seizing more than $50,000 from Hold’em Bot users, he claimed that the online poker site was sacrificing at least $70,000 per month by not allowing automated programs. “They really must have wanted us gone,” he said. “We don’t think the other poker rooms we support will make a similar financial decision.”
Jetter believes that some poker rooms, despite verbiage in their Terms and Conditions that outlaw bots, tacitly allow bots through lax enforcement because the programs are still paying customers contributing to the rake. He also believes that bots are just a way for people to have fun and experiment with new styles of play.
The article goes on to discuss how difficult it is to create a bot that could truly beat the game because poker is a game of incomplete information. Also discussed are projects at the University of Alberta and Carnegie Mellon University to build bots on par with the best poker players in the world. These bots are not used to make money online like those from Shanky Technologies, though.
Reaction to the article in the poker community has been rather tepid. Most of the comments on TwoPlusTwo revolved around the disappointment in the in-depth discussion of Shanky as well as a link that was given to the bot site. Some players felt that this unnecessarily gave Shanky free advertising for something that is considered to be cheating to most poker players.
One poster summed up his feelings, saying, “Yes it’s bad that this exists in online poker, but let’s face it, things like this will always exist in online poker. Just like there will always be hackers, viruses, etc. That’s the risk you take playing online. The good news is the article reports 90% of bots are losing players, [so] I guess the only upside to using bots is to get in tons of hands and cash in on rakeback.”
