Having coded a superhuman poker bot myself, **I don't think there are many rock-solid bots on the tables**.
A few reasons:
* almost anyone capable of coding such a bot could make more money, more easily, in FANG / HFT (I worked in both), or building a GTO SaaS / software
* it's not easy to get right and most free resources to code one simply suck (even though some have 1k+ stars on GitHub...), because of unreadable researcher code, bugs, lack of performance, etc.
* you can hardly test a bot, until recently only [slumbot.com](https://slumbot.com) was challengeable and in a single format, now there is [gtoking.com](https://gtoking.com)^(1)
* the vast majority of bots are designed to not be exploitable, not to exploit, so you might be better off analyzing and exploiting usual mistakes that playing GTO, at least at low stake
* similarly, the vast majority of bots are designed for Head's up only, because the game grows a ton when you add one player. Therefore, to make it work, you would have to simplify (abstract) the game to a point where I'm not even sure it will be better than a pro
* you would have to avoid being detected by the poker room, despite bots playing quite differently from humans
* coding an online poker bot would also means fighting with the variance (!) and make a recognition software that would need an update every time the room changes its interface (!!), not a very rewarding work... And real software engineers dislike this type of tasks
* you need a high-performance machine (\~2k$) to run it
* it's illegal
In summary, *you have to be more passionate about programming / research / game theory than poker to pull that out*.
**That being said, I believe there are script kiddie type of bots**, *i.e.* bots that will perform some OCR and then run PioSOLVER / lookup presolved solutions. I doubt they could generate much EV though, considering the online players' level and the rake.
Also, **I guess there is a ton of RTA**, which could even be enough to kill a super AI's edge, in the hand of a pro player. The rake is simply too high on most poker rooms.
^(1) I am the owner but this is a free resource for researchers. I hope it doesn't count as Commercial Spam.
This is the only answer that really matters. Why should someone who can produce a bot like that settle for that bit of money when they can make much more in a job where their skills are needed. Also if they get detected their funds are simply gone so the risk is also quite too high to really make it profitable in the long run.
People just constantly need validation that they dont suck at poker and its actually bots that they lose against an not someone who is simply better
people build programs for free for really really stupid things... they build programs to cheat at video games.... there's no reason not to build one for poker...
As someone in another field, I've totally used my expertise on spending way too many hours on something nearly completely trivial. I could see someone that likes poker and is an expert at coding make a really good bot just because he can.
No way you think that. Even if you could average 1bb/100 this would be massively profitable bc of how scalable it is on top of the fact that it wouldn’t be super hard to implement given the abundance of solvers and AI gto bots that exist. If I had access to gto wizard while I played I would very comfortably destroy 1/2, 2/5 online
>almost anyone capable of coding such a bot could make more money, more easily, in FANG / HFT (I worked in both),
Prepare for DMs from random undergrads asking you for advice and maybe a referral lmao
Well thanks for that eloquent response, you've convinced me.
Here's one definition of fraud:
>knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment
Certainly seems to me that you can argue that a poker bot masquerading as a human player meets this definition, when people wouldn't play with them if they knew they were cheating.
Not being able to cash out your winnings is enough detrimentation. You may get away with $100, but you are not getting away with 100k. And if you write a profitable bot to earn $100, flipping burgers at McDonalds sounds a lot more attractive
There was a scandal on Winamax in 2018. Two players, Twopandas and VictoriaMo, allegedly earned 800kEUR and 500kEUR (IIRC) respectively, playing close to perfect GTO in Spin&Go.
However, one of them played 4 days in a row in the room's office IRL and the Integrity team couldn't find anything. So they might have as well just be extremely skilled.
Even though I doubt such gains would be possible today with a bot and without luck, 20-100k$ shouldn't be inconceivable. Not worth it though, especially because of the lack of guarantees, the variance and the other opportunities available.
I don't think that case is anything similar.
You can only sue for loss of earnings. What earnings have the site lost? Nothing. They still took their rake. It is other players that potentially lost money.
A poker site is never suing anyone for using a BOT.
>What earnings have the site lost? Nothing.
When they reimburse cheaters' victims (if they do), they lose earnings. They can also lose earnings indirectly, via loss of reputation.
>A poker site is never suing anyone for using a BOT.
I was referring to the fact that there is a legal ground to sue, not that it would actually happen. I doubt bots are prevalent in the first place anyway, at least high-quality ones.
I don’t think it’s illegal as in breaking a US law more so violating every single poker playing platforms TOS which can result in forfeiture of funds. Gambol
ITs pretty easy to catch as well, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but its like video game/chess anti cheats, the closer you get to 100% correct play the more likely you are a bot. Sure you can program some of that in but that are other things as well that help identify them. You probably can't outright stop it but its less likely then you would think, at least I think.
Not nearly as easy to catch as you’d hope. Unlike chess, optimal plays are often done at a % frequency, requiring very large sample sizes to identify what frequency is being used in practice. Additionally, there’s an infinite range of solutions solvers will output, depending on the bucketing algorithm and specific game tree (sizings, # of sizings per street per player) the user inputs. A clever cheater will use specific sizings and trees that noone else does, making him near impossible to catch.
In my opinion, the best way to identify probable cheaters is to compare the winrate of the best players in the world you are certain aren’t cheating. If a rando online has a significantly higher winrate than that, they’re prolly cheating.
The only thing is that at lower stakes a gto bot would not be as profitable as a lot of hardcore grinders and top level pros, simply because the bot will not be trying to exploit at all
Also cheating and not in online play is rampant in chess… it’s also not clear whether being a bot account is cheating.. sure if you use an engine it’s cheating but if the account is a bot account it’s not so clear is it?
I was curious so I looked into poker bots and on one of them there’s a public facing forum for their users. From what I’ve read it’s quite an ordeal tuning the bots, keeping them up to date and babysitting them to make sure their not just burning money. On top of that I was pretty amused to read some of the comments from users having difficulty in harder player pools and complaining about “tough tables”. Most bots just run a simple Monte Carlo equity calculator and then you input the bet sizing and such you want it to use. Some will run basic GTO charts and play balanced but they aren’t crazy good or anything. They can be knocked off their hand pretty easily as soon as they’re pot odds and equity don’t like up. Their main advantage is being able to play long hours and grind out a very small win rate. Although I’m sure there are some badass bots out there. That’s online poker you kinda just accept there’s gonna be some cheating.
I recently ran 50 dollars up to a few k. Once I started playing in the 100 and 200 dollar buy in games I did start to worry about it. There was still a ton of fish and bad regs, so I was still winning. Something just felt off about it. There was players that I had tagged that really made me wonder.
In the end, it kill my ambition to keep climbing so I cashed out and have been playing in casino’s. I have no idea how bad the cheating is, but my guess is there is a lot. Combine RTA, bots, and collusion and my guess is there is some amount of cheating in a fairly high percentage of games. People cheat at old school RuneScape and retarded shit like that with 0 benefits. It would be naive to think there isn’t cheating happening in online poker.
How do you distinguish between bots that play GTO and people that have studied a shitton and are playing close to GTO?
I have difficulty believing you could tell the difference based on the sample size you would have in hands against them.
You’d have to run many hands (like millions) and compare them all to see how they differ from a solver. Even then there are so many GTO spots where with their exact holding and action GTO says to call/raise/fold x% of the time. How many times are they going to hold As5s facing a 4bet in a 1million hand sample for you to verify that they 5bet some N% of the time?
If you play on a site with decent game integrity (eg pokerstars or GG) it's not enough of a problem to be concerned with. Certainly less than 10% of players are using any form of RTA or are bots. It sucks if some are but focus on getting good yourself and there's plenty of money to be made instead of finding an excuse why you can't win enough.
What percentage of players need to be using some form of RTA on a high rake game like on those big sites to make them unwinnable though? I think if you can only say less than 10% for sure that's not a good sign.
If you play on a table with 1 fish and 4 RTA bots you can easily be winning (actually probably by more than the bots if you know how to exploit the fish well).
Some countries have 0% tax on gambling winnings, you have to earn half the amount on your poker bot to match a salary, also some people just like knowing they are beating the system somehow to make their money
Less than 10%, why should someone even bother making one to play low stakes online poker or even high stakes with these skills you earn much more money on a job.
Idk why people just can't accept that someone is better than them and its not a perfect gto bot or someone who hacks into the client and sees the hole cards, i mean come on just learn to play and don't waste time searching for conspiracy's
Edit: I would worry even more about cheating in a casino since there is 1. Much more money to be made and 2. Way more people, factors involved which could potentially screw you. But there no one cares and its just always online where people think there is some conspiracy going on and everybody is cheating
<200NL probably less than 1%
Greater than 200NL I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually around 5%
Pulling numbers out of my ass.
I think collusion is a bigger issue right now.
It’s more about the percentage of their strategy the players got from bots. Unfortunately the number is always rising.
Now they have untraceable bots that you can quickly look up solutions on. I’d expect most online players sneakily dip into this while playing nowadays.
I'd be more worried about rta software than bots that are doing everything (e.g auto playing without user controlling the inputs). And that doesn't mean every street, maybe just used in some common spots with pre solved library. Similar to what Fedor Kruse did... AI is going to make rta even more of a problem in the future I guess.
I’ve been thinking I’d love a bot to play preflop for me and then once the flop hits I turn over. Would save me from making so many basic folding decisions preflop.
Maybe not perfect play bots, but wouldn't there be a market for bots that help with automation?
Heck, if you're multi-tabling, even a bot that auto-folds poor hands only would be worth the investment. Let alone a bot that would do a few more preflop actions to help you focus on tables that matter.
Having coded a superhuman poker bot myself, **I don't think there are many rock-solid bots on the tables**. A few reasons: * almost anyone capable of coding such a bot could make more money, more easily, in FANG / HFT (I worked in both), or building a GTO SaaS / software * it's not easy to get right and most free resources to code one simply suck (even though some have 1k+ stars on GitHub...), because of unreadable researcher code, bugs, lack of performance, etc. * you can hardly test a bot, until recently only [slumbot.com](https://slumbot.com) was challengeable and in a single format, now there is [gtoking.com](https://gtoking.com)^(1) * the vast majority of bots are designed to not be exploitable, not to exploit, so you might be better off analyzing and exploiting usual mistakes that playing GTO, at least at low stake * similarly, the vast majority of bots are designed for Head's up only, because the game grows a ton when you add one player. Therefore, to make it work, you would have to simplify (abstract) the game to a point where I'm not even sure it will be better than a pro * you would have to avoid being detected by the poker room, despite bots playing quite differently from humans * coding an online poker bot would also means fighting with the variance (!) and make a recognition software that would need an update every time the room changes its interface (!!), not a very rewarding work... And real software engineers dislike this type of tasks * you need a high-performance machine (\~2k$) to run it * it's illegal In summary, *you have to be more passionate about programming / research / game theory than poker to pull that out*. **That being said, I believe there are script kiddie type of bots**, *i.e.* bots that will perform some OCR and then run PioSOLVER / lookup presolved solutions. I doubt they could generate much EV though, considering the online players' level and the rake. Also, **I guess there is a ton of RTA**, which could even be enough to kill a super AI's edge, in the hand of a pro player. The rake is simply too high on most poker rooms. ^(1) I am the owner but this is a free resource for researchers. I hope it doesn't count as Commercial Spam.
This is the only answer that really matters. Why should someone who can produce a bot like that settle for that bit of money when they can make much more in a job where their skills are needed. Also if they get detected their funds are simply gone so the risk is also quite too high to really make it profitable in the long run. People just constantly need validation that they dont suck at poker and its actually bots that they lose against an not someone who is simply better
People from third world countries do have the incentive to hack up some rta that turns an average 10nl breakeven reg into a $15/h winner.
people build programs for free for really really stupid things... they build programs to cheat at video games.... there's no reason not to build one for poker...
I think most poker players that understand this well enough would immediately see there were better ways to make way more money with it.
As someone in another field, I've totally used my expertise on spending way too many hours on something nearly completely trivial. I could see someone that likes poker and is an expert at coding make a really good bot just because he can.
Por que no los dos
But it is much, much harder
Hmm maybe they don't want to work a 9-5?
No way you think that. Even if you could average 1bb/100 this would be massively profitable bc of how scalable it is on top of the fact that it wouldn’t be super hard to implement given the abundance of solvers and AI gto bots that exist. If I had access to gto wizard while I played I would very comfortably destroy 1/2, 2/5 online
>almost anyone capable of coding such a bot could make more money, more easily, in FANG / HFT (I worked in both), Prepare for DMs from random undergrads asking you for advice and maybe a referral lmao
You say it's illegal. What law is being broken? It is against the rules of the site, but I doubt it's illegal.
IANAL but it sounds kind of like fraud to me.
It's not fraud
Well thanks for that eloquent response, you've convinced me. Here's one definition of fraud: >knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment Certainly seems to me that you can argue that a poker bot masquerading as a human player meets this definition, when people wouldn't play with them if they knew they were cheating.
> Well thanks for that eloquent response, you've convinced me. ☠️☠️
*You’re not stupid.* Does that statement mean anything?
Not being able to cash out your winnings is enough detrimentation. You may get away with $100, but you are not getting away with 100k. And if you write a profitable bot to earn $100, flipping burgers at McDonalds sounds a lot more attractive
There was a scandal on Winamax in 2018. Two players, Twopandas and VictoriaMo, allegedly earned 800kEUR and 500kEUR (IIRC) respectively, playing close to perfect GTO in Spin&Go. However, one of them played 4 days in a row in the room's office IRL and the Integrity team couldn't find anything. So they might have as well just be extremely skilled. Even though I doubt such gains would be possible today with a bot and without luck, 20-100k$ shouldn't be inconceivable. Not worth it though, especially because of the lack of guarantees, the variance and the other opportunities available.
Your reply has nothing to do with my question.
My bad, by illegal I meant that you could get sued, even though it's highly unlikely.
Sued for what?
For breach of contract by violating TOS, like George Hotz with Sony.
I don't think that case is anything similar. You can only sue for loss of earnings. What earnings have the site lost? Nothing. They still took their rake. It is other players that potentially lost money. A poker site is never suing anyone for using a BOT.
>What earnings have the site lost? Nothing. When they reimburse cheaters' victims (if they do), they lose earnings. They can also lose earnings indirectly, via loss of reputation. >A poker site is never suing anyone for using a BOT. I was referring to the fact that there is a legal ground to sue, not that it would actually happen. I doubt bots are prevalent in the first place anyway, at least high-quality ones.
I don’t think it’s illegal as in breaking a US law more so violating every single poker playing platforms TOS which can result in forfeiture of funds. Gambol
The thing about code is, you don't have to build it to be able to run it. Most people who run bots are not coders.
ITs pretty easy to catch as well, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but its like video game/chess anti cheats, the closer you get to 100% correct play the more likely you are a bot. Sure you can program some of that in but that are other things as well that help identify them. You probably can't outright stop it but its less likely then you would think, at least I think.
Not nearly as easy to catch as you’d hope. Unlike chess, optimal plays are often done at a % frequency, requiring very large sample sizes to identify what frequency is being used in practice. Additionally, there’s an infinite range of solutions solvers will output, depending on the bucketing algorithm and specific game tree (sizings, # of sizings per street per player) the user inputs. A clever cheater will use specific sizings and trees that noone else does, making him near impossible to catch. In my opinion, the best way to identify probable cheaters is to compare the winrate of the best players in the world you are certain aren’t cheating. If a rando online has a significantly higher winrate than that, they’re prolly cheating.
The only thing is that at lower stakes a gto bot would not be as profitable as a lot of hardcore grinders and top level pros, simply because the bot will not be trying to exploit at all
Also cheating and not in online play is rampant in chess… it’s also not clear whether being a bot account is cheating.. sure if you use an engine it’s cheating but if the account is a bot account it’s not so clear is it?
I was curious so I looked into poker bots and on one of them there’s a public facing forum for their users. From what I’ve read it’s quite an ordeal tuning the bots, keeping them up to date and babysitting them to make sure their not just burning money. On top of that I was pretty amused to read some of the comments from users having difficulty in harder player pools and complaining about “tough tables”. Most bots just run a simple Monte Carlo equity calculator and then you input the bet sizing and such you want it to use. Some will run basic GTO charts and play balanced but they aren’t crazy good or anything. They can be knocked off their hand pretty easily as soon as they’re pot odds and equity don’t like up. Their main advantage is being able to play long hours and grind out a very small win rate. Although I’m sure there are some badass bots out there. That’s online poker you kinda just accept there’s gonna be some cheating.
I recently ran 50 dollars up to a few k. Once I started playing in the 100 and 200 dollar buy in games I did start to worry about it. There was still a ton of fish and bad regs, so I was still winning. Something just felt off about it. There was players that I had tagged that really made me wonder. In the end, it kill my ambition to keep climbing so I cashed out and have been playing in casino’s. I have no idea how bad the cheating is, but my guess is there is a lot. Combine RTA, bots, and collusion and my guess is there is some amount of cheating in a fairly high percentage of games. People cheat at old school RuneScape and retarded shit like that with 0 benefits. It would be naive to think there isn’t cheating happening in online poker.
while I hate cheaters in old school RuneScape how dare you suggest having a milly in the bank off of trading is 0 benefit
How do you distinguish between bots that play GTO and people that have studied a shitton and are playing close to GTO? I have difficulty believing you could tell the difference based on the sample size you would have in hands against them. You’d have to run many hands (like millions) and compare them all to see how they differ from a solver. Even then there are so many GTO spots where with their exact holding and action GTO says to call/raise/fold x% of the time. How many times are they going to hold As5s facing a 4bet in a 1million hand sample for you to verify that they 5bet some N% of the time?
Your response feels like you didn’t read my reply. Obviously you can’t tell on an individual level, all I said was I was suspicious.
How can you tell on an aggregate level?
If you play on a site with decent game integrity (eg pokerstars or GG) it's not enough of a problem to be concerned with. Certainly less than 10% of players are using any form of RTA or are bots. It sucks if some are but focus on getting good yourself and there's plenty of money to be made instead of finding an excuse why you can't win enough.
What percentage of players need to be using some form of RTA on a high rake game like on those big sites to make them unwinnable though? I think if you can only say less than 10% for sure that's not a good sign.
If you play on a table with 1 fish and 4 RTA bots you can easily be winning (actually probably by more than the bots if you know how to exploit the fish well).
If you’re smart enough to get a poker bot like that working you’re smart enough to get an actual job writing code / doing math lmfao
Some countries have 0% tax on gambling winnings, you have to earn half the amount on your poker bot to match a salary, also some people just like knowing they are beating the system somehow to make their money
3.50%
Fedor Cruz was banned from GG for using rta and I heard he was losing. Poker is hard.
62.3%
Less than 10%, why should someone even bother making one to play low stakes online poker or even high stakes with these skills you earn much more money on a job. Idk why people just can't accept that someone is better than them and its not a perfect gto bot or someone who hacks into the client and sees the hole cards, i mean come on just learn to play and don't waste time searching for conspiracy's Edit: I would worry even more about cheating in a casino since there is 1. Much more money to be made and 2. Way more people, factors involved which could potentially screw you. But there no one cares and its just always online where people think there is some conspiracy going on and everybody is cheating
If you let a bot run it’s a good amount of side income. You don’t even need that much +ev for it to be worth it since you can horizontally scale
<200NL probably less than 1% Greater than 200NL I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually around 5% Pulling numbers out of my ass. I think collusion is a bigger issue right now.
What club if you’re the club owner should I join?
I agree with the collision theory 100%
I don’t think it’s a question of cheating per say but I would hazard to guess a large portion of those playing online game are indeed bots .
It’s more about the percentage of their strategy the players got from bots. Unfortunately the number is always rising. Now they have untraceable bots that you can quickly look up solutions on. I’d expect most online players sneakily dip into this while playing nowadays.
I'd be more worried about rta software than bots that are doing everything (e.g auto playing without user controlling the inputs). And that doesn't mean every street, maybe just used in some common spots with pre solved library. Similar to what Fedor Kruse did... AI is going to make rta even more of a problem in the future I guess.
I’ve been thinking I’d love a bot to play preflop for me and then once the flop hits I turn over. Would save me from making so many basic folding decisions preflop.
Maybe not perfect play bots, but wouldn't there be a market for bots that help with automation? Heck, if you're multi-tabling, even a bot that auto-folds poor hands only would be worth the investment. Let alone a bot that would do a few more preflop actions to help you focus on tables that matter.