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Poker Bots and Other Threats
Bots are sophisticated card-playing robots that are being used in commercial gambling sites as opponents to an online human player. It is believed that these bots are capable of beating not only the newcomers and the strategy-impaired but even above-average players as well. The University of Alberto 's Computer Poker Research Group has already developed an artificially intelligent automation which is capable of playing poker at the master level. It has been used to test the frontiers of artificial intelligence as well as a basis for a commercial poker tutorial program. Developers of these bots acknowledge that the strategy of the game is very different. It is not an easy task to develop a program that can beat a table of experienced human players. It would take the ability to calculate probabilities as well as a layer of artificial intelligence to understand the game and reason. The disadvantage of humans against bots is that these artificial players absolutely do not have fear or shame. It cannot be intimidated thus it will not back-off when faced with a very aggressive player. It is programmed to win and will do just that at the slightest advantage it can detect based on the human's playing history. Poker sites all have policies prohibiting the use of bots. It has become a very sensitive issue to operators of poker sites. Creators of poker software aver that they have been able to detect, and defeat bots by strict monitoring of suspicious patterns of play and tweaking of software. The move towards creating programs that read opponent's card by the use of scanning technique to respond in real time remains inadequate up to the present. The best online poker rooms have secured their connections with the same technology used in securing online credit card and banking transactions. A person would be quite comfortable in playing online poker if online banking, stock trading or credit card use poses no problem. Collusion happens on both online and real life games. What should be avoided is initiating the very act of fraud itself or helping in any way to promote it. |
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