You're a Bunch of Factors

As I discussed with benny the cunt, after I FT bubbled the $3 Thurs night and continued to rail and chat the FT, here are some Poker Tracker stats.... I don't actually use PT, but Poker Prosepctor, and as I understand PT BB/100 a BB is defined as 2 Big Blinds's, where are Prospector says "Big Blinds / 100" so I have double that stat to reflect.

So, even though I think stats, or more specifically, visualizations of various stats are more useful to plug holes in your game, more so than determining a style as such, and these stats aren't really the one's I use to analyze my game, more the graphs of certain other stats by position, hand strength preflop etc, iI here lay my poker Soul (as far as these numbers can represent) for all...
And I dont include the BB/100 stat for tournaments, as I dont see it as relevant as it is in Ring games, well... in my style of play anway, cos I do vary with stage of tournaments (eg: it increases filtering hands where there are antes > 0)

I filered time-wise for 'this year'.

Tournament field size ranges from ~500 to 3000+, I didnt note the average.
Ring is also filtered for 6max, as the vast majority of my ring games are 6 max, and this skews the stats somewhat. And most SnGs I play are HU, and theres probably not much value in including those stats.
These come from 2 sites, even though i have accounts at others and still occasionally play some there I dont import these site's data (when first building a roll I was a bit of a bonus hunter )
Not using PT, I hence dont use PAHUD, but at one site I play i use another profiling app that provides exactly the same info, and I mainly use it for only current session (convergence is a problem IMO).

One of the reasons I use Prospector is I like it visualization options, but also I write Poker Bots, and the university of Alberta (who publish the s/w) are the biggest University based Poker AI research dept, and I like to think chosing it supports that research.
Yes, you did read correctly, I am an avid Poker Botter.
I don't however use them on poker sites, but in competitions ran for machine v machine, and man v machine poker (and cos I love doing it). So I suppose really it is 99% a 'poker brain' as there is not a single line of code to interface it with any poker site client software, only the competition game protocols, a lot of which match Poker Academy's protocol for writing custom bots (PA is a poker simulator/trainer also developed by the UofA based on some of its most advanced Poker AI and Player modelling techiques, which actually does a fairly good job of building a profile of you when you play it, especially over a decent period of time! Also makes it perfect to use as a testbed for my own poker AI
Although I do know (not IRL, but online) a number of botters who set them lose on sites for real$ and there is some pretty scary stuff going on out there. But most bots are losing and imo dont really harm the game. Even a break-even or very slightly -EV bot can actually make large sums over the period of a year though!

Its not the kind of thing many people could do or even be bothered doing, so you are not likely to come against this yourself, but there are some disturbing techniques for cheating online poker....

If you want to take the red pill.... I can post more about this later

Be very careful about describing poker bots.

If your doing it for the machine vs machine, or man vs machine challenges. Then that is fine. I would like to know how your going with it and inputting strategies if you break it down to table position or just generalisation.

If you use them on a site. Well, there was an incident a few years back where some bots got caught, and thousands were seized. I take a dim view on cheating or not playing in the spirit.

Obviously Bots are better for Limit Holdem and the Holy grail is a no limit Holdem bot for all those wondering at home.

Brett Kay wrote:Be very careful about describing poker bots.

If your doing it for the machine vs machine, or man vs machine challenges. Then that is fine. I would like to know how your going with it and inputting strategies if you break it down to table position or just generalisation.

If you use them on a site. Well, there was an incident a few years back where some bots got caught, and thousands were seized. I take a dim view on cheating or not playing in the spirit.

Obviously Bots are better for Limit Holdem and the Holy grail is a no limit Holdem bot for all those wondering at home.

Yes, limit bots are easier to wite because limit holdem is more mechanical. i write NL bots and as i said in the OP NEVER let them loose on poker sites, although I did say thay most, and truly most that do play on live sites are losing bots. Precious few make money by themselves. What I was refering to about a break-even bot having the capacity to make $ over the course of a yr was with regard to rakeback deals, or PokerStars SuperNova reward program which is worth cash. If you have a break-even bot playing alot of $10/20 or higher NLHE it will make quite a bit in rakeback. And then imagine the (against T&C) case where people have multiple accounts...
Personally I think the publics perception of Pokerbots is overkill. I dont consider a Pokerbot to be cheating, but there are other bot and software based ways that people DO cheat at online poker, and thats what I was refering to at the end of the OP.
The ONLY reason Pokersites such as Stars prohibit them is their users want that. The sites themselves would LOVE them, cos they can only make more $$$ for the site, and as I said, 95% of them are losing anyway. But if you read, particularly the Stars, T&Cs you will notice many things that are downright unethical, and if people were aware of just how intrusive Pokerstars is or can be in their attempt to detect bots or other prohibited software on your machine, you probably wouldnt install it, or atleast use some of the stealthing techniques described on certain other sites. The only way they can get away with such T&Cs is because of the countries they operate out of. If an Australian company tried to do similar things to Australian consumers, they would be closed down until they ammended certain things...

Now a bit about my own bot. I decided a while ago to merge my research in AI, and my love of poker, hence a bot. i do not intend ever to place it on a site for money, although there is an up an coming site, that actually encourages bots, indeed has bot only tables, and I would consider letting it loose on there, but not yet.
I think any strategy needs to be positionally aware to be successful. The main area I am working on atm is the player profiling. i currently use a hybrid solution of a 'default strategy' (basically rule based) which is used against an unknown opponent, while that opp is being profiled. The profiling itself is a hybrid solution of PT like stats, with a few extra things noted, and NN based profiling. The main problem is taking a profile and generating good decisions from that, regardless of the strategy you use. For this I use an evolutionary programming technique based on Classifier Systems, to generate, and also to learn better, actions against particular opponents.
Basically atm, the profiling/decision module determines how the default strategy is deviated from against that opponent. But I am also working on better techniques than this.
There is a private league on PokerAI.org that I do quite well on, but it still has a way to go... I was going to say 'until I am happy with it' but i will never be happy with it!

AJG wrote:I dont consider a Pokerbot to be cheating

sorry, but how, in any way, shape, or form can this be NOT cheating?

it is the very definition of cheating online

bennymacca wrote:

AJG wrote:I dont consider a Pokerbot to be cheating

sorry, but how, in any way, shape, or form can this be NOT cheating?

it is the very definition of cheating online

Cheating to me is gaining an advantage your opponents dont have (Edit: other than skill)... How is a bot cheating? The human brain is still superior in most ways to a silicon chip.

Do you consider Deep Blue cheated while beating Kasperov at chess?

bennymacca wrote:it is the very definition of cheating online

Does this imply you see a difference between cheating on/off line?

the whole point of a bot is that it can play waaaay more than a human can.

so there are many ways a bot is blatantly cheating

1. playing more tables than a person could otherwise handle
2. playing for longer than a human can
3. the absense of tilt, tiredness, and a multitude of other human related factors.


would you like me to go on? to say that bots aren't cheating is ridiculous.

AJG wrote:Does this imply you see a difference between cheating on/off line?

no

Point 3 is the only valid one, imo.
As, i have seen people (successfully) play over 30 SnGs at once.
about playing longer hours:
a) this is something sites look for to indicate a bot, so most successful botters limit the time in any given session or week.
b) Lets say a bot stays a the same table for a full 24hours, they are not playing the same opponents for that whole time?

WHat I mean when I say I dont consider it cheating (although agree with ur point 3, many human players can be machinelike in their discipline sometimes) is that, say you and a bot were at the same table, just for 2 hours. What advantage does the bot have, really? Indeed they have some significant disadvantages...

Wow.

Edit: I'll add a serious reply later.

AJG wrote:Point 3 is the only valid one, imo.
As, i have seen people (successfully) play over 30 SnGs at once.
about playing longer hours:
a) this is something sites look for to indicate a bot, so most successful botters limit the time in any given session or week.
b) Lets say a bot stays a the same table for a full 24hours, they are not playing the same opponents for that whole time?

WHat I mean when I say I dont consider it cheating (although agree with ur point 3, many human players can be machinelike in their discipline sometimes) is that, say you and a bot were at the same table, just for 2 hours. What advantage does the bot have, really? Indeed they have some significant disadvantages...

so you can play 30 SNGs can you? some poeple might, but you definitely couldnt.

same thing for the longer hours. i agree that you cant have the bot going 24/7, but you could still have it going 14 hours a day 365 days a year, playing 30 tables at once. a human, especially one at your or my level, wouldnt even come close to this volume.

so yes, bots are cheating. if you dont think so, then thats stupid