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Surprisingly, no. Most sites do a good job of finding and banning bots. It's also fairly easy to spot a bot. They will make odd sized bets at times. You check t

Surprisingly, no. Most sites do a good job of finding and banning bots. It's also fairly easy to spot a bot. They will make odd sized bets at times. You check to see if that betting line is taken in a solver.

Waterluvian 1y ago
And then there’s all the bots you aren’t spotting.
- albatrossjr 1y ago
  I'm sure there is some, but it's standard practice to keep at database of all your hands. I've sanity checked the winning regs (at my stakes) and they all make mistakes. I think it helps that in the US all the sites are geography based. It makes it harder and less financially viable to run a bot ring.
  - recursive 1y ago
    I don't know what a reg is but I would assume the first thing you do after you get your bot working is to add some imperfect play so that you don't get banned by the most trivial heuristics.
    - Waterluvian 1y ago
      Yeah. Poker isn’t actually hard to play perfectly if you’re writing a bot. The hard part is making it look authentic and not emit any patterns or other signals that could be detected in the data.
      - MarcelOlsz 1y ago
        So it's a cat and mouse game like most things, except the spread between the cat and the mouse is quite high but is still (somewhat) in favour of the mouse as the online poker world currently stands?
      - vmg12 1y ago
        > Poker isn’t actually hard to play perfectly if you’re writing a bot Writing a winning poker bot is not trivial, you are unknowingly spreading false information.
        bee_rider 1y ago
        Hmm… there are multiple variants of poker, at least one was weakly solved in 2015. I guess one could implement their algorithm. But I don’t know if the weakly solved variant of poker is popular? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheus_(poker_bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheus_(poker_bot)
        verteu 1y ago
        That bot only solved 1-on-1 poker ("heads up"). It's much more difficult with more players.
      - hiatus 1y ago
        > Poker isn’t actually hard to play perfectly if you’re writing a bot. How so? It's not like the entire game state is visible to all players, and a big part of poker is playing the other players.
        schwartzworld 1y ago
        The best human poker players are able to calculate pot odds in their heads. Much of gambling is understanding when the risk of any given bet is actually worth it. Reading people and playing the other players is less important than understanding the likelihood of drawing the card you want and how that compares to the percentage of profit you’ll make on a bet.
      - sejje 1y ago
        It's exceedingly hard to play perfectly. Nobody knows how except in limited toy games, like heads up at 7BBs or less. And perfect play varies drastically from opponent to opponent, this isn't blackjack.
    - bluecheese452 1y ago
      Reg means regular, ie someone who plays a lot. Usually but not always it implies someone who is a winning or at least attempting to be a winning player
raincole 1y ago
Sites have very a strong incentive to make you believe this. Otherwise no human would join anymore.
- vmg12 1y ago
  I'm beating online poker. The difficulty of beating online poker is very much dependent on the site and the rake.
  - maest 1y ago
    Doesn't mean bots aren't widespread. It just means you're better than the breakeven player.
    - vmg12 1y ago
      I'm a software engineer with 10+ years of experience. I'm also a poker player that has a very deep understanding of the game. Writing a poker bot that can beat the game is absolutely not trivial. There are "solvers" that use counterfactual regret minimization to solve a constrained version of the game for specific scenarios. These are useful for understanding the principles of the game but they are not the cheat sheet people think they are. I think people fundamentally don't get that poker is not like chess. The vast majority of money I win is from identifying when players are too attached to their hand and never folding or when they just give up on their hand and fold to any bet.
      - Cool_Caribou 1y ago
        I'm an ex online poker pro. You probably don't have the deep understanding of the game you think you have. Bots were already destroying the field up to mid-stakes 10 years ago.
        dddgghhbbfblk 1y ago
        I'm a current online poker pro but probably not for much longer. Bots are a serious and real problem and they do beat the games for a good winrate. But it's still possible to make money even in environments with some bots as long as you can find games with fish. And some games on geofenced sites (the OP said they play in Michigan) or other small pools don't appear to have bot problems.
kyleblarson 1y ago
Then you have to worry about the site itself being shady. Live poker is really the only path. Plus it's so much more fun.

Waterluvian 1y ago

And then there’s all the bots you aren’t spotting.

albatrossjr 1y ago
I'm sure there is some, but it's standard practice to keep at database of all your hands. I've sanity checked the winning regs (at my stakes) and they all make mistakes. I think it helps that in the US all the sites are geography based. It makes it harder and less financially viable to run a bot ring.
- recursive 1y ago
  I don't know what a reg is but I would assume the first thing you do after you get your bot working is to add some imperfect play so that you don't get banned by the most trivial heuristics.
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    Yeah. Poker isn’t actually hard to play perfectly if you’re writing a bot. The hard part is making it look authentic and not emit any patterns or other signals that could be detected in the data.
    - MarcelOlsz 1y ago
      So it's a cat and mouse game like most things, except the spread between the cat and the mouse is quite high but is still (somewhat) in favour of the mouse as the online poker world currently stands?
    - vmg12 1y ago
      > Poker isn’t actually hard to play perfectly if you’re writing a bot Writing a winning poker bot is not trivial, you are unknowingly spreading false information.
      - bee_rider 1y ago
        Hmm… there are multiple variants of poker, at least one was weakly solved in 2015. I guess one could implement their algorithm. But I don’t know if the weakly solved variant of poker is popular? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheus_(poker_bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheus_(poker_bot)
        verteu 1y ago
        That bot only solved 1-on-1 poker ("heads up"). It's much more difficult with more players.
    - hiatus 1y ago
      > Poker isn’t actually hard to play perfectly if you’re writing a bot. How so? It's not like the entire game state is visible to all players, and a big part of poker is playing the other players.
      - schwartzworld 1y ago
        The best human poker players are able to calculate pot odds in their heads. Much of gambling is understanding when the risk of any given bet is actually worth it. Reading people and playing the other players is less important than understanding the likelihood of drawing the card you want and how that compares to the percentage of profit you’ll make on a bet.
    - sejje 1y ago
      It's exceedingly hard to play perfectly. Nobody knows how except in limited toy games, like heads up at 7BBs or less. And perfect play varies drastically from opponent to opponent, this isn't blackjack.
  - bluecheese452 1y ago
    Reg means regular, ie someone who plays a lot. Usually but not always it implies someone who is a winning or at least attempting to be a winning player

raincole 1y ago

Sites have very a strong incentive to make you believe this. Otherwise no human would join anymore.

vmg12 1y ago
I'm beating online poker. The difficulty of beating online poker is very much dependent on the site and the rake.
- maest 1y ago
  Doesn't mean bots aren't widespread. It just means you're better than the breakeven player.
  - vmg12 1y ago
    I'm a software engineer with 10+ years of experience. I'm also a poker player that has a very deep understanding of the game. Writing a poker bot that can beat the game is absolutely not trivial. There are "solvers" that use counterfactual regret minimization to solve a constrained version of the game for specific scenarios. These are useful for understanding the principles of the game but they are not the cheat sheet people think they are. I think people fundamentally don't get that poker is not like chess. The vast majority of money I win is from identifying when players are too attached to their hand and never folding or when they just give up on their hand and fold to any bet.
    - Cool_Caribou 1y ago
      I'm an ex online poker pro. You probably don't have the deep understanding of the game you think you have. Bots were already destroying the field up to mid-stakes 10 years ago.
      - dddgghhbbfblk 1y ago
        I'm a current online poker pro but probably not for much longer. Bots are a serious and real problem and they do beat the games for a good winrate. But it's still possible to make money even in environments with some bots as long as you can find games with fish. And some games on geofenced sites (the OP said they play in Michigan) or other small pools don't appear to have bot problems.

kyleblarson 1y ago

Then you have to worry about the site itself being shady. Live poker is really the only path. Plus it's so much more fun.