Posted by Dr Fro 11:56 AM
Thanks to Cameron for submitting this article on bots. This is a subject that has been discussed ad naseum on poker chat boards, but this is the first take on it in the mainstream media that I have seen. As a matter of fact, to date, the proliferation of articles in mainstream media on poker have all been the same bland "hey, poker is popular" take.

I think that as poker grows, we will see more and more articles on some of the darker aspects of the game. This is no different than pro sports like baseball. These days you pick up the sports page and it is about steriods and BALCO, chairs hitting fans, players betting on baseball, or Manny Ramirez being, well, Manny Ramirez. The topics that will eventually be part of the mainstream media coverage are:

- addiction
- poker pros "off the court" problems (Slim's pedaphile charges, for instance)
- cheating online via collusion
- cheating online via bots
- cheating online vis disconnect-protect
- massive losses suffered by newbies
- etc

Read Poker Nation and you will see plenty of dark side.

But as to the subject at hand in this article, I think that I agree that the robots are not really a problem yet:

“I don’t foresee a danger of bots killing the game in any sense,” he said.
“More likely, there will be a large contribution of cash from people who
try to create bots and fail.”

Yet I do find this short sighted. The technology will only improve and when that happens robots will have an edge.

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