Unfortunately cheating occurs when there's money involved.

It doesn't matter if it's poker, the business world or politics. Hell, people cheat to gain an edge in FREE online games (such as Utopia, Pimpwars, Kdice, etc).

There's just more incentive when there's money involved. Still, don't let that deter you from playing. The majority of players are not cheating, but unfortunately it only takes a handful of high profile ones to ruin the reputation of the game.

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online poker is doomed in my oppion after reading this thread im genuinely worryed about playing online, with things like www.poker-edge.com about and those stupid http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6002298/ and allsorts of other bots, how can you stand a chance, the only advantage humans have is our unpredictabilty, and thus we can make irrational descions.

Then live poker would be doomed too, what with the possibility of teams signaling each other at the table, marking cards, setting the deck, palming cards, etc.

The thing is that the media overdramatizes EVERYTHING. So much so that people automatically assume the worst. I still can't convince my mother that there are arabs who AREN'T suicide bombers. Because of what she sees on the news, EVERY arab is a suicide bomber.

And hey, why bother getting a degree or working hard in your job? It's all rigged, what with the families that run everything and keep their own in control of all the top positions. The best you can hope to do is become associate supervisor who reports to the supervisor who reports to the manager who reports to the director who reports to the VP of sales, etc.

And by the way, despite all this horrible cheating that makes it impossible for anyone to make a living playing poker, I'm doing it, as are many others.

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95% of players dont cheat, dont worry about it....yea its almost impossible to stop all cheating, but they find a way to discover the cheaters

I study Artificial Intelligence and for one project I started making a bot. I automated the task of folding a certain range of hands from certain positions. Relative easy to do, I only used it on play money tables and only for research purposes. Still there's no question in my mind a bot can win vs humans at all limits. Also have a look at: http://www.pokerlistings.com/laak-es...computer-16165

I know poker software register all kind of variables to prevent bots. Rumors like bots and cheating are killing for their rep, you can be sure they do everything they can to prevent them (and that's a lot with their budgets).

Bots could beat the game three years ago (the human players were considerably worse then now), they didn't and they don't seem to do now on a great scale.

So play on.... for now.

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Old news. The bot eventually lost. And it wasn't even against top players. Note that the bot was a result of years and years of research. Not just one research project. I have looked at some of the University of Alberta poker group research, and its a lot of work during many years.

Yes, maybe a bot that will be able to beat the best will be designed soon, and probably by the above mentioned research group. However its still impossible for commercial bots to beat the best. Yes they can probably beat donks and fish, but not good players. How can a bot which is sold for about $50 be able to beat top players when a bot designed after years and years of research by scientists is not able to do that yet?

There are also stories about really good bots which are sold for thousands of dollars and cannot be found easily. I'll believe it when I see it though.

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I don't think anyone creating a bot would be worried about "beating the best". The object should be to make a profitable bot. If you could make one that can beat the fish/donks then you could run multiple instances of it across multiple tables and make a good chunk of change in that regard.

I don't think having it play NL or PL games would be the way to go. A limit game that's more mathematical than psychological would be the best route, such as having it play Stud games and be able to recall all the upcards that have been folded to calculate it's odds of improving it's hand. Or Omaha hi/lo in loose-passive games where it can relatively nut-peddle and show a profit.

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I honestly believe I could theoretically write a bot to beat NL100 full ring on most sites. 12 tabling playrs are pretty much bots anyway.
My bot wouldn't be the biggest winner in the game, and it would be exploitable by better players however as Rake says that doesn't matter. As long as there are enough fish about it would be profitable.

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I'm not worried about bots at the moment - it's just not happening at a level that would worry a mid stakes player. The only thing that concerns me is collusion. I've reported it a few times over the years and never saw the players again, so I assume they were booted. The rooms are really hot on stopping this sort of thing so if people are caught they get their accounts suspended pretty quickly (including losing their funds).

I too beleive it would be possible to build a pretty decent bot for Limit, bit more difficult for NL, but I don't think we're anywhere near having the programs for that yet. Maybe some time in the future - but not yet. I expect that when that does become possible the rooms will start introducing random sophisticated CAPTHA's or something like that, that only a human could validate.

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