Bots Pose Threat to Online Poker Players and Sites

Online poker has revolutionized the way in which people play games like Texas Hold’em and Omaha, but the increased anonymity of the game in comparison to the traditional game played at brick-and-mortar casinos is something that has fostered cheating. Cheating can come in any number of different forms, but poker bots have become increasingly pervasive in recent years.

Without getting into technical details, a bot is nothing more than a computer program that can play real money online poker games in place of a human player. In addition to simply playing the game, bots are programmed with artificial intelligence to make decisions, some of which have gotten so sophisticated that they can, quite literally, win more often than they lose.

Why Would Someone Use a Bot?

The initial thought as to why someone might employ the use of a bot is that it will play hundreds of thousands of hands of poker, win a player loads of money, and inevitably make him or her rich without the player having to expend any effort. This sounds nice, but if it were reality, then we would have a load of bankrupted online poker players on our hands, and that certainly is not the case.

There are bots out there that can consistently beat a game of poker and win a player thousands of dollars via minimal effort, but these are not as commonplace as you might think. In most cases, dishonest users employ bots to clear the playthrough requirements of bonuses and to cash in on rakeback deals with any actual poker winnings amounting to just a bit of extra gravy on top. In both of these instances, the common denominator comes down to time played.

Most bonuses and rakeback deals can only be taken full advantage of through hours of grinding, so that is where bots come in. By being able to log into an online poker account and play real money games while a person is at work, asleep, or otherwise away from their computer, bots can achieve in hours what might take a human player days, weeks, or even months.

Bots Used to Dominate Competition

There is no doubting that people have attempted to program bots that are capable of beating human opponents on a consistent basis, but the fact of the matter is that most bots – even those demonstrating a fair degree of technical sophistication – can be easily defeated by a decent poker player. Most of these computer programs act in predictable ways, and, though they may win a few hands or even be profitable over the course of a few days or weeks, they can ultimately be beaten.

For the average recreational player, the possibility of bots lurking on every online poker site might be enough to deter them from ever signing up and playing a hand and understandably so. This is despite the likelihood of encountering a bot not being not very high as it currently stands. Nevertheless, fear of bots is a pretty commonplace concern especially among potential players who are susceptible to believing the worst.

PartyPoker Closes 250+ Bot Accounts

By design, bots are intended to avoid attracting attention as that would lead to the online poker site closing the accounts with which they are associated. If bots were dominating players on one or more sites, winning thousands, the site operators would catch wind of this quickly and put an end to it. In fact, that is exactly what happened with one of the most high-profile names in online poker, PartyPoker.

PartyPoker has confirmed that its dedicated fraud team has recently been closing bot accounts, and they have so far exceeded 250 account closures. From December of last year through March of 2019, the fraud team at PartyPoker successfully retrieved approximately $735K that was stolen from players through bots.

PartyPoker, through its blog, announced that it is continuing to combat bot accounts and that these efforts are being headed by their “specialist Poker Fraud Team,” which is a “collection of former poker professionals who are equipped with the necessary knowledge and expertise to investigate suspicious activity.”

The post goes on to say that suspicious activity can take on many forms but did not elaborate too much further than that. In short, the newly developed team at PartyPoker is looking for anything a player or account is doing that might give them an unfair advantage over unknowing opponents.

Anti-Bot Initiatives Good News for Players

For honest players who go online looking for a fun and fair game, this is great news because it is nice to see an operator try to ensure that the playing environment is even and fair. And Party is not the only online poker site developing strong countermeasures against bots.

The Winning Poker Network, which caters primarily to a US-based audience, has also recently announced that they have been actively combating bots on their network. Just like PartyPoker, WPN is changing company policies and attempting to squash bots and return stolen money to players. Already, less than a month after instituting this new initiative, the WPN has restored more than $200K from botters back to legitimate players.

Though there will undoubtedly be further challenges ahead, it’s heartening to see the steps taken by PartyPoker and the Winning Poker Network. We can only hope that other internet poker rooms follow their example and enact strong anti-bot policies too.