Should you be worried about playing against POKER BOTS?
Forum writers chip in with their thoughts on software that "tells" player what to do in a mathematically proficeint way.....
When playing a bot it is very easy to exploit it. First they only bet according to pot odds so you can usually just reraise them out of the pot. But if they dont fold, you have to because they have the nuts. Second they cannot pick up on a bluff, so you usually see 3 or 4 other players stealing from them nonstop until they finally go broke. The only bad side is when there is a real person sitting at the other end, and he sees what you are doing then waits and traps you. The good thing, is 99% of the time they only play limit tables, so you wont lose that much.
I read that thread on 2+2 as well and they were in the higher stakes if I remember right. I used to think that I saw them at small Full Tilt Poker tables before. Apparently they did not do much to discourage using them over there. I know that Stars will ban their asses fast for using them.
Last year, Phil Laak had a highly publicized competition with a Poker Bot designed by the brilliant minds behind Poker Academy. He won, but it was in no way an easy conquest.
The real problem that I have with them, is that one bot that uses a central database to share hole cards. So if there are 3 people at your table using it, they all know each other hands, obviously we know why that sucks. That would be easy to spot imo as well, because you would notice if a certain 3 people never got into the pot together, ever. That bot is like multi-accounting to the 14 trillionth power...
Overall I am not too worried about bots, really I wish that Stars would let them come on, but keep a list of known bots for the community. Then after the bots owner goes broke 10 or 15 times, he probably will smarten up. Again sucks that they really only play limit (or doesnt suck depending on where you stand I guess).
This so-called bot is such a complete scam the designer won't even add a voice over to the video.
I am not going to post the link, but there is a new open source bot that is based on the "best" bot out there. These can actually "learn" after playing against an opponent for awhile and change its play accordingly. I am one of the people that thinks that if they are allowed to go on unchecked, that eventually bots could become a major problem as more and more (and better coders) get into the action. For the few people that run them and actually have one that works, I am sure that they are making a killing.
The other side of the issue (though I am against them either way) is that some people use them in "semi-auto" mode. Mainly it would be for a novice player that is just learning. It will count all the outs and calculate the odds and tell you whether or not it thinks you should bet or fold. You still can set it to actually click the button, but more or less it shows you anything that you may have overlooked (flush draw, straight draw, etc).
I use Poker Tracker and sometimes (when not at home on my computer) a program called Tournament Indicator. We all know what the first is, but the latter I use to keep their stats (same as Poker Tracker HUD) but it doesnt overlap onto the table. These software are about as far as I think that people should be able to go. This is another reason why I like Stars. They have a no-nonsense type of attitude. If they catch you using a banned program, they warn you to get rid of it. Keep using it and expect to see your account locked and funds confiscated. (Though I am not a fan of Stars being able to see all of the programs that I have running...)
Some people on my regular forum have a discussion for some weeks now, but the biggest problem so far is that the quality arent any good, I mean they play to "expecting", they are good but they have some weaknesses.
Whenever you see people offering cash if you send them your hand histories, PLEASE dont send them, no matter how good their intention might be, this is very often a scam in order to build up the bots database, I have seen questions on a lot of forums involving this matter, and if people send them their hand history the bots will only be "stronger".
My prediction is that in a year or two, the pokersites will be forced to do some serious action against bots, so far they are more or less avoiding the problems, but at present time its not a big enough problem.
Some sites like Poker Stars are taking this problem very seriously, but they are rather hard to detect if the person behing the bot dont get too greedy