great questions; here's where we drew the line (our Terms of Service (TOS) were fairly standard): it was within the TOS to use a "poker assistant"--an app that

great questions; here's where we drew the line (our Terms of Service (TOS) were fairly standard): it was within the TOS to use a "poker assistant"--an app that worked with the Site client (eg, PokerStars, or in my case, bwin.party)--provided that this app was populated with hand histories that you have personally generated against the opponents you are playing against. In other words, you cannot mine hand histories in bulk, feed them to your "assistant" and then let it tell you how to play. keep in mind also that the whales in online poker are not high stakes players but "grinders"--folks who quit their day job to play a very disciplined style on low-stakes limit tables comprised mostly of beginners, and which requires multi-tabling (maybe 6 - 10 tables at once) 8 hours/day. So against that background, a bot playing 10 tables simultaneously for 10 hours each day, from a distance doesn't look so odd.