Download Poker Bots Invade Online Gaming

Andrew DePriest
4/12/2011
CSCE 390 – 001
Professional Issues in Computer Science and Engineering
(Article found in the March 14, 2011 edition of ACM TechNews, originally published in New York Times)
Article: “Poker Bots Invade Online Gaming”
By: Gabriel Dance - March 13, 2011
The Problem

An increasing number of online poker “players”
are bots

While not a new problem, recently skill has gone up

Openly sold from sites like “Shanky Technologies”

Used to make large amounts of money easily

•
E.g. When PokerStars was tipped off, they found 10 bots,
which had won more than $57,000 that they returned to
players
Using bots against humans violates the ACM Code
of Ethics section 1.4 – Be fair and take action not to
discriminate
Ethical Decision-Making Process

Ethical Issue


Bots used to “cheat” - able to play all the time, even
when player is not active, to make more money
Stakeholders



Poker companies – want maximized revenue, and
to give human players the best experience
Bot sellers – want to continue selling software for
profit
Human players – want a fair game
3 possible solutions

Bot sellers stop selling bots


Poker companies stop doing poker online


(this would never happen, even if it was illegal)
Pretty much a bad choice for everyone involved
Have a dedicated section of online poker for
bots to play against other bots


Defeats the “easy win” of bots vs. humans
Allows for the bots' games to be based on skill
through editing the programming of the a.i.
Conclusion

I think the 3rd proposed solution is a pragmatic,
reasonable, and fair way to solve the problem.

Granted, some people will still try to cheat, if there
is a section for bots, it should reduce the amount of
them. And various other anti-bot implementations
could be used in the human vs. human games.