What You Need to Know About Poker Bots
The future is a promising place, especially if all the predictions about artificial intelligence come true. From self-driving cars to digital doctors that can diagnose diseases long before symptoms surface, the power of AI is limitless. And who doesn’t dream about having a robot butler? Yet artificial intelligence is already making our lives easier. Assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are probably in your home or pocket waiting to answer your commands right now. Yet not all robots or forms of AI have your interests at heart. In fact, some players have attempted to harness the power of poker bots to gain an unfair advantage when playing cards online.
While bots on Ya Poker and other poker sites are certainly controversial, it’s worth taking the time to understand exactly what they are, how they work, and why they’re banned. At Ya Poker, cheating in all forms is strictly prohibited, yet dishonest players have tried to game the system. Keep reading and we’ll reveal the real measures we take to stop YP bots in their virtual tracks.
What Are Poker Bots
While the term poker bot might conjure up images of Bender from Futurama playing a high stakes card game with other robots and even a few aliens, it’s far less exciting than that. Poker bots are nothing more than computer software applications designed to play cards against human players and even other bots. Although the strategies that poker bots use to play the game vary, bots don’t have to be successful or profitable to earn the name.
Bots simply need to connect with the site’s poker software and play cards without the need for a human player to be present. If you’ve ever played online poker, you know that part of the appeal is that you get to compete against other human players from across the country and around the world. Not only can you showcase your skills and win real money in the process, but you get to engage in what often amounts to a game of psychological warfare. Unfortunately, the human elements that make online poker so great are jeopardized through the use of a poker bot.
Ya Poker has a strict policy against the use of bots for this reason and countless others. In fact, all reputable sites prohibit the use of bots. At Ya Poker, bots struggle not just because they are ultimately stopped dead in their tracks by our security team. Bots fail because they rely on information that’s incomplete. Even the most astute software can’t see your cards. While programmers can teach a bot the proper way to play poker, this knowledge is no match for the bluffing of a seasoned poker player, especially those who know they’re facing a bot.
Who Uses Poker Bots
Historically, poker bots have been used by players looking to make a quick buck. While some bots are profitable, those bucks rarely come quickly. In reality, successful bots tend to play at low stakes for long periods of time. From the user’s perspective, this isn’t really an issue since once you set the software up it can keep playing forever or until your computer crashes or the internet connection goes down. It’s basically free money except that Ya Poker bots won’t get to keep their winnings when they’re caught.
At Ya Poker, cheating is never tolerated. Nonetheless, players have attempted to unlock bonuses by using bots. In the past, some unethical poker rooms have used their own bots to inflate their player traffic. While there are no YP bots, we can’t comment on the practices of competing sites. We do know that you deserve to compete against human players.
A Brief History of Bots
While bots have been around as long as the online poker industry itself, poker AIs have a much lengthier history. In 1984, Mike Caro wrote a program which he showcased at the WSOP, that was able to beat Doyle Brunson. Interestingly enough, that Apple II program actually scanned the cards using a barcode reader as they were dealt. At the University of Alberta in Canada, the Computer Poker Research Group has spent more than two decades trying to create poker software that can beat humans. Their 1997 release Loki is considered the first AI, even if it’s thought to be a below average player and only works with limit poker. You don’t have to be a mathematician or computer scientist to find their work fascinating.
The group stages annual tournaments where the latest poker AIs battle each other on the felt. Although the first online poker bots were created by budding programmers as a fun experiment, it didn’t take long for software packages to be sold commercially. By the time the online poker boom was in full swing in the mid 2000’s, there were dozens of tools on the market, most of which were eventually banned by poker sites. Today’s bots are more advanced than their predecessors. Not only are they highly customizable, but many feature heads up displays that can spot player weaknesses. Even so, they aren’t exactly the sort of artificial intelligence built using a neural network that most players would assume, but we’ll get into more of that later.
The Benefits of Bots
While bots have plenty of shortcomings, they also shine where humans fail. Aside from having unlimited stamina, which lets them play until the power goes out, they don’t let emotions influence their play.
They also aren’t programmed to fear losing money. Bots don’t have to worry about making poor decisions while intoxicated or tired.
Poker Bots Making Headlines
If you follow the world of technology, you’ve probably heard about Libratus. That’s the artificial intelligence bot that managed to conquer a Texas hold’em tournament against poker pros in 2017. While that’s an impressive feat that can technically be repeated, you won’t encounter anything like Libratus when playing at an online poker site. Even if a user chooses to violate the terms and conditions at Ya Poker, bots like Libratus just aren’t practical. While we certainly congratulate Libratus for crushing the tourney, it took around 19 million core hours of computing power. That means unless you have access to the latest supercomputers and the money to operate them, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence built using a neural network is practically impossible.
Even the most impressive Mac or PC rig just isn’t going to cut it. The fact is anyone who has access to that kind of computing power isn’t going to waste it playing poker. At poker sites like Ya Poker, all forms of cheating are strictly prohibited. The YP end user license agreement explicitly forbids the use of all forms of artificial intelligence including robots and related software. Players who use bots on Ya Poker will not only be caught and have their funds seized, but they will be subject to a lifetime ban. Yet it’s worth noting that the bots used by unscrupulous players tend to be rather rudimentary and are easy to spot by our security team. While the more advanced bots can be programmed to adopt different strategies, even seasoned players can spot a bot. In other words, they’re easy to eradicate should they worm their way onto a site. Of course, it’s an ongoing battle and we welcome you to bring suspected bots on Ya Poker to our attention.
The Benefits of Bots
How we Catch Bots At Ya Poker
There are a number of different methods that the Game Integrity Team utilizes in order to catch bots on the site. In addition to watching for the common patterns of behavior that bots demonstrate, which we listed in the ‘How to Spot a Poker Bot’ section above, Ya Poker has several sophisticated software tools at our disposal that flags suspicious play and notifies security to have a closer look. While we can’t publicly disclose our range of security measures, we can tell you about the CAPTCHA system we have in place to help us verify if a player is a bot.
Once a potential bot has either been detected by our security measures, or potentially identified to us by another player, we send them a CAPTCHA. The player then has 60 seconds to fill in the CAPTCHA to prove there is a human operating the computer and actually playing the hands. As bots are often unmanned computers, they will fail this test as there is no one present to type in the CAPTCHA to verify their identity as a human being. Players who fail to correctly fill in the CAPTCHA are automatically forced to sit out at the table while continuing to post their blinds until the time they physically logout of the poker client. Once a bot is detected and confirmed, it’s our policy to close the account involved, seize all funds, and refund any losses that are incurred to players who may have been affected.
