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Gossip Guide

MSNBC - Mike Brunker: Are poker ‘bots’ raking online pots?

Pull up a chair at a friendly poker game in a buddy’s den and you probably know the other players and have some idea of their card-playing weaknesses – like Big Al's habit of fingering his chips when he's itching to raise. But take a seat at a table in one of the rapidly multiplying online card rooms and there's no telling who’s sitting to your right – or if the player is even human.

Concern is growing in online chat rooms and news groups devoted to poker that sophisticated card-playing robots – known as “bots” in the nomenclature of the Web – are being used on commercial gambling sites to fleece newcomers, the strategy-impaired and maybe even above-average players.

“It is pretty much a certainty that bots are playing online,” said Gautam Rao, a 43-year-old Canadian poker pro who regularly plays three high-stakes Internet games simultaneously. “… What we don’t know is how strong they are.”

Widespread use of bots capable of beating your average player would pose a significant problem for the red-hot online poker sector, which has grown exponentially in recent years and is expected to top the $1 billion revenue mark this year. Without some way of verifying the identity – and humanity – of players, the business could be significantly undercut.

Many don't see a threat but skeptics – and there are many – argue the complexities of the game and the changing strategies ensure that creation of a program that can “read” opponents’ cards using screen scanning techniques and respond in real time is years away at best. They point to the handful of commercial products that purport to give online players significant advantage, which they roundly deride as woefully inadequate, as proof today's bots are no match for humans.

Rao and his fellow believers have a ready answer: A bot capable of playing against the best humans already exists.

The University of Alberta’s Computer Poker Research Group has developed an artificially intelligent automaton known as “Vex Bot,” capable of playing poker at the master level, though as yet it can only apply its gambling genius to two-player games. Vex Bot has been used by researchers to test the frontiers of artificial intelligence – and as the basis for a commercial poker tutorial program, Poki’s Poker Academy -- but some fear it may become a blueprint for programmers with more sinister motives.