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| Automated bots playing poker until a real players joins | Started by: Squishy on May 22, '16 21:24 |
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I found a company that wrote a series of bots that play PokerMavens (the poker server we use) to provide someone to play against while waiting for other people to join. The bots are not part of the poker server themselves, so they can't actually see any cards other than their own. They seem a little... easy.. so I worry that it may become a money leak, however, with some crafty coding I should be able to disable them when they lose a certain amount, (so like, they only can work with the rake that the table gets, once that hits 0, it leaves until it has a big enough rake to join back up... sort of a safe guard so we dont lose millions per day). From my understanding, is that I can set a minimum per table, so there is always some action... but once a real player joins, I can have the bots go away. Now my concern is a few fold: 1) We have some... special.. users who think the world is out to get them. So despite the bots being dumb and having to follow a pretty rigid playing style, sometimes they will get better cards than you and win. This will lead to a series of accusations and other irrational behavior by our more .. feral... users. 2) They will lose money to anyone who knows poker, but we can control how bad by constantly modifying their balance to whatever the rake has brought in. So while they can lose money, they can only negate any profits poker made with the rake that day, not actually lose deeper than that. 3) They seem to fold... a lot. So they are sorta fun, but.. ehh...
Anyway, its a pretty substantial cost to purchase the program, and then do all the custom coding required so i wanted to run it by you guys to see if its something the playerbase would like.
They have a demo and a FAQ that I ask that you play and fully read before you comment here. http://www.ipokerbot.com/demo.html (You can probably use a fake email, it never asked me to confirm my email) |
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I love the idea, and I would certainly play, but I just love poker sooo, lol. I am completely biased :P |
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| Reply by: River at May 22, '16 21:33 | |
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Okay, so to start, I love poker and I stopped even trying to play here much because I can never find anyone on when I am. For that reason I think this would be a great idea. That said after going to play the demo for a bit I do see the issues that you raised. They were certainly not hard to play against and did fold quite often. The second is the bigger issue I see because it is potentially ripe for exploitation. I decided to test it and in 10 hands that I wanted them to fold I was able to get them to fold every time. I did this through all in bets or even just strategic high betting (3 clubs showing in river, bet half pot). Without fail they folded each time. A savvy player could easily take advantage of this to basically turn the bots into a cash cow. That said, if you can modify it to limit the amount of money a player could make doing this so that it wasn't really worth the effort then it would be an awesome addition to the game. |
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| Reply by: Jim_Scalise at May 23, '16 00:13 | |
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Oh, and as for our...special....players, they are going to find a reason to complain no matter what you do so screw em :) |
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| Reply by: Jim_Scalise at May 23, '16 00:14 | |
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My brief two cents: 1) The cost for exploitation is certainly possible, but the safeguards you mentioned would seem to protect against this possibility. Still, it's a real concern. 2) Is there a high demand for poker right now? It would seem to me that if we had tons of people wanting to play poker, then we wouldn't need bots. If we have lots of people who don't want poker, why pay a lot of money to add bots? Perhaps further steps could be taken to link up players with each other. I know there are some current things that accomplish this; why not try that more before taking a big step? 3) As I mentioned above- my main concern is that if a majority of the site loved poker we wouldn't even be having a discussion about bots. But the biggest concern I have is that if, to benefit a minority of the site, "its a pretty substantial cost to purchase the program". Is there a better use for these resources? If you could just add these pokerbots at zero cost I'd say go for it- might as well give it a try. But to expend resources here means they aren't going anywhere else. Now I have no idea what else is on the wishlist- but time and resources spent here would make those other things less likely, I'd assume. |
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| Reply by: Keats at May 23, '16 00:44 | |
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I enjoy poker, I'm pretty sure plenty of people here do also. On a game which is quite slow going at times it would be a welcome distraction to pass the time as well as helping newer members of the community, like myself, get to know other players. The lack of people to play against at the moment is the downside, even if you can pass time with some fold happy bots we can hang around long enough to catch each other on there and hopefully start to utilise the feature better. The worries about the chance to exploit are certainly founded but as long as it is carefully monitored I'm sure the creases can be ironed out. The potential benefit for the community I think outweighs the risks, it all swings on how substantial the cost is and whether maybe a small credit cost for a week/month access could cover it. |
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| Reply by: MnM at May 23, '16 21:54 | |
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Minimum $20,000
