In today's fast-paced world of the ever increasing dynamics of technological advancements, most of us believe that poker bots do exist; however, it is very rare to read about it in the Internet on how they win, what things you need to watch out for, and what it takes to remain undetected when botting, and of course, no one in their right mind would divulge these tactics online for all to see if they want to become truly successful in botting.
However, if you take a moment and read this forum site, you may come to believe ‘themadbotter' and his thread that he created last weekend - telling everyone about his bot's escapades on America's Cardroom (ACR) on the Winning Poker Network (WPN).
A self-confessed "botter" or otherwise known as a poker bot operator, surprised the members on the 2+2 forums last weekend to announce his retirement from successful "botting."
The unknown poster, going by the name "themadbotter", seemed to enjoy the limelight and went on to provide detailed answers to the questions of the forum members, while carefully ignoring bashes from others, in an attempt to offer a candid and intriguing glimpse into the world and mindset of a high-tech poker cheat.
Perhaps it was mostly too candid, because he (let us assume this one's male) might have accidentally revealed his identity and got himself into hot water (we'll delve more on that later).
Themadbotter announced, "I have decided to retire from botting and focus my energy on something more meaningful." This announcement he wrote coincides with the time he withdrew his last funds from America's Card Room (ACR).
TMI Anyone?
Themadbotter made it clear that his confession of poker botting was not because he felt guilty doing the wrong thing, but simply because the effort it takes to make the bot to play well was a "time-consuming endeavor".
He said that his bot was "not merely a plug and play solution", able to win only at the lowest limits, but this was specially coded by himself and that it needed constant perfecting and re-tweaking. He claimed his bot made $30,000 at ACR over a period of 6 months, which he had progressively withdrawn.
He said, "For me, it took me about a week to write a profile that played well enough to beat 10NL and about a month of reworking that profile to beat 50NL at a solid clip. Over the course of the next few months, I steadily improved the bot's performance based on manual review of hand histories and results. Making it play exceptionally well is still extremely time-consuming and it requires a lot of trial runs and hand history reviews."
He also said that a well-constructed bot is difficult to detect. By setting commands such as making it take play breaks, sitting out, among other human-like behavioral patterns that he programmed it to do, the bot appeared entirely real to most other players.
The Sudden Downfall
All things seem to be going well for ‘themadbotter' and his thread, but one sharp poster going by the name NovaCaine, reacted the other way.
NovaCaine wrote, "OP's (opening poster) not as smart as he thinks. Only a couple of regs went mia (missing in action) recently and i got a good hunch who he is. Gonna try to contact a couple other players to confirm my numbers."
Within hours, ACR conducted an investigation, and themadbotter became uneasy saying, "I'm sorry to disappoint you all, I was just bored and wanted to troll. This is why I could not post any proof. I hope that admin can delete this thread so as to not cause undue panic in the players or to unnecessarily slander WPN's reputation. ACR should ask to have this thread deleted since there is no reason why my unfortunate misstep, with no proof or evidence to support any of the allegations in this thread, should unnecessarily cause them financial harm or bring negative publicity."
After that, he was gone, taking with him a lifetime ban (award) from the Winning Poker Network, and so now the curtain closes, leaving us a short but intriguing glimpse of the most rare and shady human-like creatures that exist only in the poker world, the botter.
source: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/confessions-botter-acr-wpn-1619689/ & http://www.onlinepoker.net/poker-news/online-poker-news/themadbotter-confessions-hightech-poker-cheat/30530