Uno de los artículos que más me gustó de la revista Wired September is On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Bot . Consider how experts in software and games, specifically online poker , designed bots (robots) to play in virtual casinos. The article is very entertaining and also many comments from the creators of this software there are also anecdotes and curious stories. What I have called the state of the current state of online casinos, especially the poker tables, could be summarized as follows: - Some companies that manufacture software in the form of robots who play poker. Sell \u200b\u200bthe software (bots) directly to some players. The variant of poker most popular is the famous Texas Hold'em or "Poker No Limit Texas' popularized by the movie Rounders.
- calculated Bots played much better than most humans. Are accurate to the balance of probabilities, when to bet, when to fold, when to bluff, raise the stakes, etc. Although they may lose in some cases, usually have an advantage playing against humans who are not great players and win consistently. They are tireless and somewhat foolproof. Never leave the strategy to check them.
- When these bots come into a table, it is not easy to distinguish from humans. People try to chat with them, but sometimes the player with the chat bot done manually (while the bot plays). Candidates are almost beyond the Turing Test ;-)
- online casinos expel bots that detect or block the accounts of those players, which is in a "lawless" at least. (Maybe to block accounts of players are bots, if they win). Both casinos as creators of bots are accusing each other of "lack of sense of ethics, morality and bla bla bla." Eventually the problem is not whether you win or lose bot. It's all typical problems of casinos with the people who make money on them.
- People with bots can make them play on many tables and many casinos at a time, is an ongoing war between online casinos and the creators of bots. There are techniques to hide bots on remote computers to avoid being seen to belong to the same person or from which place they are playing.
- Bots can play as a team, which is usually considered "cheating." There may be several sitting at a table and "teach" the cards together by direct communication that bypasses the table. Is it really cheating? People can also play as a team and taught their letters offline (for example, two friends in the same room with two laptops). By this trick the bots can fool the human opponents and improve their game considerably: first, know more letters of the table and therefore the estimation of probabilities is greatly improved. It sometimes happens that a bot with good cards let another strong bet bot to fool a player who eventually loses to the first bot.
- is not clear whether casinos use bots themselves, or if they do to encourage the tables or making money. The online casinos say they do not use them. Online casinos always win money at the poker table because they have an unwavering commitment of all that players are betting.
Finally, the truth is that the article is really good, and shows an aspect that probably many people who play online (especially the addicted gamblers ) often forget: that as it says in the title, Internet, nobody knows if you are playing against a bot or another person. And no doubt the bots are better and crushed ruthlessly and relentlessly to "suckers" who come into the tables. If you play and lose, get that question.
the end of the article also appears Jonathan Schaeffer, who works on Poki-Poker software to teach how to play poker. Schaeffer is also the creator of Chinook, the first program that played to the ladies who won the human world champion in the 90's. This story is told in One Jump Ahead, a beautiful book that tells the whole story the development of this software. Indeed it seems to have made progress recently in the final settlement of the analysis of the game of checkers (in full) and for a tournament openings have proven a winning strategy. They also widened the final database and you know all the solutions for ten items or less.
