Poker bot vs. gold farmers: what's the difference?

There's a fascinating discussion thread on the 2+2 forums about some bot-like activity at FullTilt.com. The thread is currently at 166 pages long, and I've only made it about halfway through, but it looks like a poker player analyzed more than 300,000 hands and found four players who had statistics that were so similar that it was statistically unlikely (beyond three standard deviations) that they weren't being run by a bot. In addition, among the 300,000 hands at the same game ($1/$2 NLH), the four players had never played against each other. The poster reported his findings to FullTilt in February. The accounts were locked in April, then recently reactivated.

After about 40 pages of discussion -- which included IP tracking and net searches that revealed the alleged bot operator's name, home town, photo, and the fact that he played in the WSOP main event last year, the names of aliases that he uses on several other poker sites, and players razzing him from the rail while he continued to play -- a forum regular, Nation, disclosed that he was an acquaintance of the player in question (nlnuts), and had seen the player's setup: five players on five computers in a room outside of Pittsburgh, with a very specific script, all playing identically, providing each other with encouragement and advice, and sharing in the winnings. Some people on the thread refuse to believe that a team of players can be disciplined enough to follow a script and have results be so statistically similar. Others question whether it's ethical for players not in a hand to be giving advice to someone playing. Others seem to have no problem with it.

I do believe that they've basically got a team of five poker playing gold farmers. The question of ethics, interestingly enough, was brought up a few weeks ago in the Ante Up podcast, when professional player Paul Wasicka (2007 National Heads-Up champion, 2006 WSOP main event runner-up, cover boy on the May 15, 2007 issue of Card Player)...

got this all started with a recent article in Bluff Magazine where he outlined the advantages of joint sessions online (two players share a bankroll and decisions, but play only one hand). He called in to give us his views on it. He admits that he never considered the fact that anyone would consider it unethical when he wrote the article, but was forced to consider the notion based on feedback he got. In the end, though, he decided that it's alright because online poker is a different animal, and since everyone else can use joint sessions or tracking software or any number of other aids, you shouldn't deny yourself the same advantages. His final point: If you play online, you need to be aware of these issues.

The rule forever has been one player to a hand. Because it's not able to be enforced, that appears to no longer be the rule online.

FullTilt's response: "During the investigation we found the evidence to be inconclusive in supporting either determination (human or bot). After careful consideration, the evidence did not warrant the seizure of funds and permanent account closure."

The sky, it's a falling

From Neteller.com:

Effective Immediately

Due to recent US legislative changes and events, effective immediately, US members are no longer able to transfer funds to or from any online gambling sites.

All US members will continue to be able to use their NETELLER e-wallet account to safely transfer funds to and from non-gambling merchants and are not required to close their account or withdraw their funds.

I received several e-mails from many of the online casinos I played at last summer, plus e-mail from FullTilt[1] and PokerStars. In short, without sending a check or money order, it's going to be difficult to get money into our out of online gambling sites.

Wil Wheaton comments at thusly at CardSquad: this is the beginning of the end:

See, I really like poker, but I'm not rich, and while I'm entirely comfortable risking the price of a night out for dinner and a movie to play cards and maybe even leave with more than I started, I don't see myself driving to Commerce or the Bike, or making a special trip to Vegas to play in a B&M room for higher stakes, with the associated costs of travel and the extra investment of my time.

There are a lot of reasons to loathe my idiot government now, and this is right up there in my top five: they're telling me what I can do in my own home, and they're negatively impacting my ability to support myself and my family . . . and for what, exactly? So Bill Frist can pander to a minority of ultra-conservative whackos, and then not even follow through on his presidential bid?

This sucks. It makes me angry, and it makes me depressed.

Wil refers to Bill Rini's article, in which Bill accurately points out that the sky is indeed falling:

The problem is, IMHO, people like Amy who tell people that the sky isn’t falling. It gives credit to those saying this is some sort of isolated incident. Just like Firepay[2] was an isolated incident, Party[3] leaving the US was an isolated incident, Paradise[4] leaving the US was an isolated incident, yadda, yadda, yadda. People need to wake up and realize the US government has come to the playing field with their A-Game. We’re bumbling around arguing about whether there’s even a game today or not. The sky IS falling! How can you watch these multi-billion dollar a year companies bolting out of the US faster than you move your hand off a hot stove and think this is something that’s going to easily pass?

If you have even one iota of knowledge about how money moves around in this business the goals of the UIGEA[5] should have sent cold shivers down your spine. The guys who wrote the bill either by design or by complete fluke figured out how to best kill an online poker company; starve it to death.

What's going to happen? Well, for me, I've got about $150 sitting in PokerStars, and a few bucks either at FullTilt or BoDog. Those few bucks will need to grow to at least $50 to make a permissible withdrawl. The $150 will have to be the basis for my entire future play, which will need to be pretty much exclusively at PokerStars, unless I want to go through the multi-week process of getting a withdrawl, cashing the check, and writing a new check to another source. (Western Union fees make using them prohibitive.)

Assuming everyone's in a similar spot, the way I see it playing out is like this: very few new players will be sending checks to put money into their accounts. It's too time consuming, and most casual players probably made their first deposit on a whim. This means that, for the most part, the only money in play will be money that people had in their accounts on January 18.

Generally, the weakest players will lose their bankrolls first. Few new players will sign up to take their spots. PokerStars, who has had 40,000-80,000 players at a time each evening, will see these numbers drop as the better players take the money from the fish. As the numbers drop, the caliber of the average player increases. The medium sized fish, who have eaten all the small fish, become the small fish. I'm guessing that I'm one of these medium sized fish.

A smart fish (I'm an example of this, I hope) will play until they're in the lower half of the skill level of the remaining players. The smart thing to do is to play until this point, then withdraw all funds. The tough part is determining what this point is. Maybe I'm already there. At that point, the pool of players gets smaller and smaller, until it's a small handful of very good US players, and middle-to-good players from outside the US.

At least I can drive a mile and visit a local B&M casino. This has to really suck for people who live in places like Dallas or Salt Lake City, where the nearest card room is several hours away (or available in the warehouse district only if you use the secret knock and password).

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[1] From an e-mail from FullTilt: "As you may be aware, NETeller has announced that it will no longer accept transfer requests from U.S. customers to online poker sites or allow withdrawals from online poker sites to your NETeller account, effective immediately."

[2] Firepay was an online payment processor, like Neteller and PayPal. PayPal pulled out of the online gambling market a couple years ago, when they were getting dinged with too many chargebacks.

[3], [4] PartyPoker and Paradise pulled out in October, with a slew of other sites.

[5] The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. This is the party of smaller government?

Catching up

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, mainly, I guess, because my poker confidence has been pretty low, and I haven't had much to crow about. Back in late October, when I moved from PartyPoker to PokerStars, the word online was that the fishiest players from Party were moving to PokerStars and FullTilt. I signed up at PokerStars to catch the fish (or maybe I was one of the school of fish leaving Party?), and did well for a few weeks. Then FullTilt offered a 100% matching bonus, so I moved my funds there in early November, continuing to win until about Thanksgiving. But since then, it's been a downward trend.

Maybe all the fish got fished out. The percentage of players seeing the flop in the 50¢/$1 games was almost always around 30-33%, sometimes as low as 25-27%. As a point of reference, a table with 35-40% begins to get juicy enough that its waiting list will begin to grow rapidly. However, unlike the other poker rooms, FullTilt only has 9 players per table instead of 10, which means these numbers are an even greater indication of the tightness of the tables.

Should I have played looser, knowing that the tables were so tight? Maybe, but that's not my style, and not something I've had a lot of practice at.

On Boxing Day, after losing another $12 at FullTilt, I pulled my money out, and went in search of easier pickings. In the end, even though FullTilt had paid me $45 in bonuses, I ended up down about $21 from my initial FullTilt buyin.

I'd dug through PokerTracker's hand history, found mistakes (overplaying overcards), and worked to fix them. I'd re-tightened my starting hand requirements. No luck. I was being beat like a wet noodle. (That's not a good thing, if you're the noodle.)

I dug through my quasi-spam emailbox at Yahoo, looking for any poker offers from casinos I hadn't tried yet, and found an offer for $20 free from Bodog Casino. Casino games only, and $500 playthru restriction.

Sure. Why not.

I turned the $20 into a real $16, withdrew it, and sat down at the cheap no-limit poker tables at Bodog... and lost a quarter of it the first day, trying to push pocket 8s through a flop with a K showing. Not smart.

So last night, feeling that I needed to get some real perspective on my game, I went to Happy Days to play in their midnight tournament.* (Well, first I went to Palace with a match play coupon I found in the News Tribune a few weeks ago. It was kind of strange to walk up to the cage, exchange the coupon for a match play ticket, bet $10 on the blackjack table, hit a 20 against the dealers 17, then walk back to the cage and cash out for $30. A quick three minutes work.)

(Oh, and I hit blackjack on my first two hands at Happy Days, too, on match play; nice start to a good evening. Remind me to write up something about tonight, the night I took insurance by mistake.)

When the tournament started, the alternate list was 16 players deep. I played good, tight, aggressive poker, helped by the fact that the two players to my left would telegraph when they planned to fold, and made it as deep as 12th place. Maybe I shouldn't have pushed all in with AQs and 77 on consecutive hands (lost both), but if either of those would have hit, I'd have been in a great spot to go deep into the money instead of just getting my buyin back.

I felt like I was playing some of the best poker I've played in a long time, in spite of getting few good hands. KJo in early position, close to the bubble but with a good sized stack? Folded it. No sense in taking a risk there... but I think I would have pushed with it online.

Maybe that's the difference. I need to push myself to realize that the online chips are just as real as the clay chips in the casino. Perhaps I've forgotten that.

At lunch today, I played a $4+$0.40 tourney at Bodog. Finished in first place. Is my funk cured? Or will I go back to chasing with suited face overcards?

* As of December 1, Happy Days has midnight tournaments on M-T-W-Th only, but noon and 7 pm tournaments every day.

Edit: Added graph

Money for nothin', chips for free

One of the hour-long sessions at the conference this morning went for 15 minutes instead, so I had an hour to burn. I signed into Full Tilt (only about 10,000 players on at 8 AM PST on a Wednesday) and played a 0.50/$1 game while waiting for more players to show up at the $1+$0.25 HORSE tournament table.

The ring game was looser than I expected -- I figured only the degenerates who knew the game would be playing at this time of the morning -- but one guy was voluntarily in the pot something like 78% of the time, so I could pretty much safely ignore him. In spite of losing a TPTK hand to a loose guy who flopped trips, I still ended up +$3.65 for the hour.

The HORSE tournament started just about the time I was thinking it was too late to start a tournament. I'd only built my 1500 stack to 1695, making me fourth out of seven, but it was time to go to the next session. I crossed my fingers, checked "sit out", and closed my laptop, leaving the table running.

Looking at the hand history:

• Lost a big blind of 100 on the turn (limit hold em), then small blind of 60 (Omaha)
• Won 360 with a big blind hand of 9s 6s 5c Qd (two pair) (Omaha, four players checked to river, no low), then lost small blind of 60
• Lost 25 x 10 in Razz antes
• Lost 30 x 11 in Stud antes
• Lost 40 x 9 in Stud 8 antes, and was in the money when the fourth place player lost to a set
• Then hold em kicked back in:
  • I big blinded my last 95, and won 285 with T7o with a one card flush.
  • Then lost the 150 small blind, skipped a hand, and was all in with 135 hitting another flush while holding pocket tens, winning 405.
  • Then lost the 150 small blind, skipped a hand, and was all in with 255, and the other players folded, back up to 405.
  • Then lost the 150 small blind, skipped a hand, and was all in with 255, tripling up to 765 with J5s, (pair of jacks).
  • The next hand, the third place player gets knocked out. Two hands later, I lose, ending in second place, winning $2.40 (net +$1.15).

Nice run -- too bad I wasn't around to see it.

Texas is Hold 'Em-free

I'm in Dallas for a week for a conference, and arrived late Saturday in order to be sure I was in time for a Sunday afternoon session. Having all of Saturday night and Sunday morning, I figured I'd have time to find some local card rooms and play a few hours of poker.

Yeah, well, not really. I knew coming down that poker games with a rake are illegal, and that there's no casinos in Texas. There's ads... for Shreveport, Lousiana and Duncan, Oklahoma. With no rental car, those 2-3 hour drives aren't gonna happen.

Several local web forums (link, link) indicate that there's a thriving underground poker scene, but particularly after a SWAT team raid this summer, you won't find out the card room locations online, and you'll basically have to be screened to get in. It also sounds like higher stakes than I want to play, too.

In fact, the only place I found that spreads any game with a reasonable limit is (NSFW) The Lodge strip club, which hosts a free tournament on Sunday afternoons. Not gonna work. So, it's online from the hotel room.

Wil Wheaton posed a question on the CardSquad blog. "With Party Poker pulling out of the US market, Full Tilt and Poker Stars have exploded, and I've heard from lots of people that the games are incredibly easy to beat now, even on PokerStars, which has a reputation for tougher competition and stronger players." He's got few replies, but I can say that from my experience, it's true. I played at PokerStars 12 days in late August and early September, and ended up -$16.70. I've played at PokerStars 11 times in October/November, and am +$65.68.

On the advice of Tres, I started playing at FullTilt tonight. I don't like it as much as PokerStars; their tournaments aren't as frequent, and FullTilt's screens aren't as re-sizeable, making it challenging to multi-table on a small laptop monitor. Still, I'm ahead there so far.