Full Tilt Poker Makes Another Major Bot Bust

wanbet-bc518

2007-12-20

A few months ago Full Tilt Poker busted a number of "bots" operating in their mid limit Heads Up Limit games. A substantial amount of money was confiscated from the "bot" accounts and redistributed to the victims, and the bots were banned from the site.

Now Full Tilt Poker has banned a number of other "bot" accounts. Actually, they banned these accounts about a month and a half ago, but just started distributing the seized funds yesterday.

"Bot" accounts seem to either prefer the really low limit No Limit Hold'em ring games or the mid limit Limit Hold'em games (heads up). The rationale for operating bots in both games is easy to see: in the case of the low limit No Limit Hold'em games, you could employ a fairly basic strategy of simply pushing all-in if you held a certain range of hands. Due to the weak play at these levels, you are going to get called by extremely weak hands. Heads Up Limit Hold'em is another obvious choice for people employing "bot" technology because the artificial intelligence needed to play a heads-up game is presumably much easier to program than in a short-handed or full ring game.

A few months ago, a number of "bot" accounts were banned from Full Tilt Poker, including "japinthesack" and "beatme1." Hundreds of thousands of dollars were confiscated and returned to the victims of the "bots."

Now, Full Tilt has banned another batch of bots operating in the heads up mid limit Limit Hold'em games. One of these accounts is "pokergirl z", who has apparently had about $47k confiscated from her account. There were a number of other alleged "bot" accounts banned as well.

The owner of the "pokergirl z" account has been posting on 2+2, proclaiming her innocence. As I said earlier, her account was actually banned about a month and a half ago, but Full Tilt Poker just recently started distributing her seized funds.

Her account was initially frozen on October 12th. After a number of weeks of investigation, Full Tilt banned her account permanently, saying that they had assessed her hand histories and "playing patterns" and had determined that she was using an artificial intelligence program. As per their usual policy, Full Tilt is being tight-lipped about exactly how they determined that she was "allegedly" a bot, but one can assume that they use statistical analysis, timing tells and maybe even screenshots of her desktop to come to their conclusion.

"pokergirl z" is obviously not pleased, but there is no way for her to really do anything as Full Tilt has the final say.

It makes you wonder how many alleged "bot" accounts are operating on Full Tilt or any other site at this exact moment.

wanbet-bc518

2007-12-23

几个月前FTP扑克关闭了一批bot账户。这些bot账户主要是在FTP扑克的中等大小的限制HU（heads-up）桌上玩。FTP将这些bot账户的钱返还给了那些受害的玩家，bot账户永久关闭。

一个半月前，FTP扑克又关闭了一批bot账户，并于昨天将钱返还给了那些受害玩家。

bot账户主要在小额的无限制德州扑克桌子或者中等大小的限制德州扑克桌子上玩(包括HU)。为什么呢？因为在小额的无限制桌上用扑克的基本策略，对那些打得比较松和打得比较差的玩家很适用。同样，限制桌的HU比赛也是最适合采用基本扑克策略的地方。

最近这批关闭的bot中最引人注目的是pokergirl z，被FTP没收的资金有4.7万美金，全部返还给了受害玩家。该bot的主人在著名的英文论坛2+2上发贴说自己是无辜的，没有做错任何事。

FTP于10月12日冻结了她的账户，经过几周的调查，永久关闭了她的账户。FTP说通过分析该账户的游戏历史记录和下注模式，认为该账户使用了人工智能程序。根据扑克场政策，扑克场不会透露他们有哪些证据确认扑克账户采用了人工智能程序。

目前为止，FTP扑克是打击bot最厉害的扑克室。