Fulltilt Lawsuit - Bots?

[Jeremy]

Full Tilt Poker Sued Over Bot Use

This is an interesting case that I think could become much more interesting than the Gowen case. I can't even imagine a case like this being discussed in a CA court. It would seem that the entire business and the inner workings of FT would be completely exposed. I imagine the individuals named are a little uneasy about this. O/U on them settling out of court for a nice payday?

The allegation of bot use at FT by FT would be very disturbing if true.

[Greg]

Oh great. This is definitely not what FTP even wants to be brought up in the news, let alone in court. They should have settled this before it ever got this far. No question they will now. Also, this sort of thing pushes any legislation that is currently being proposed back in the wrong direction. I am seeing this all leading towards internal, federally regulated licenses being distributed to companies that aren't name Fulltilt or Pokerstars.

[xYassassinYx]

Yeah got to agree with you about a big out of court settlement.

Whether it is true or not I really do not know, I mean if you play the FTP ring games long enough and use software, some players are just like robots so I'd say this is why the players are so suspicious. Would be tragic if this was true though

[gooderpoker]

Bit off topic but anyone tried the bonusbots system for FT? Do these bots actually work?

[pokerprop]

A little off topic (sorta) - but I'll share my experience now from years ago on how Party handles this situation for me.

I made decent money for a short time using bots at PartyPoker in the early days. I had a 3 unit apartment connect from DSL and Cable at both. 6 accounts total and none would play together. The bots crushed 25c/50c and 50c/$1. At $1/$2 and $2/4 it was close to break even.. Monitored it could have been profitable - the problem was I'd be away from computer and when short handed good players at the higher limits would totally exploit the bots. The bots were very aggressive and did not know to stop raising when 4 to a flush was on the board and they had a set.. they'd cap all the way so for sure were losing bets, but the smaller tables where it stayed full ring more often and had a lot of fish coming in and out it would do fine.

I earned about $20K doing this over several months. I was caught by PartyPoker and all six accounts were suspended at the same time. The one with the largest balance I worked on first. The closed the account but gave me the money and did not mention the other accounts. When calling about the other accounts they asked each person what the relationship was to the other accounts. We fessed up quickly admitted to be using odds calculator software that had auto play feature that a friend had developed. We claimed ignorance by insisting we were sitting there watching the play and would overide the bots decision when the bot was too aggressive (this was true but only to small extent. I watched the tables maybe 30 minutes per day before letting them coast the rest of the time).

The other 5 accounts were all turned back on. Despite never having played together we were all banned from sitting at the same table and were told if ever using the software again our accounts would be permanent banned.

There was a legit person behind each account (neither of our names) but me and my friend managed them all.

I know things have changed a lot since then and this is more of a wide spread problem. However at the time i really thought nothing wrong at all about doing this. Back then I found nothing wrong with extreme bonus whoring using multiple accounts at both poker and sportsbooks etc. It was a different time i was younger etc.

However, Party never once mentioned confiscation of funds, even when warning if using the account software again they just said the accounts would be closed. I assume the same as the first account which was closed but the cashier and (site based) log-in still worked - just couldn't access tables.

[Unknown Webmaster]

The guy who reported the "botters" has a history of making wild accusations.

@Gooderpoker
I wouldn't expect any "out of the box" bot to do anything worthwhile.

It is possible to create a winning bot, and it is also possible to run one without being detected (within reason).

Distributing the thing to a lot of other people, who probably don't have any clue about what they are doing, sounds like a recipe for disaster.

You can read about poker bots here.

[Riyaz]

FT probably gets hundreds of players threatening to sue them every week. I guess nobody had acted on it until now.... will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[MJ]

This was on TMZ homepage one day last week, was taken down within hours.

[PokerSoftwareGuy]

Pokerprop,

You are one of the few bot makers/operators I have seen posting about it. Quite interesting, from both an engineer and poker perspective.

I'd like to hear more, if you have time, so send me a pm if you can.

It really makes me wonder how many of the players out there that are legit and I for one, have no problem of assuming that the actual operators not only look the other way when it comes to botting, but also condone it and may possibly also operating bots themselves.

A little off topic (sorta) - but I'll share my experience now from years ago on how Party handles this situation for me.

I made decent money for a short time using bots at PartyPoker in the early days. I had a 3 unit apartment connect from DSL and Cable at both. 6 accounts total and none would play together. The bots crushed 25c/50c and 50c/$1. At $1/$2 and $2/4 it was close to break even.. Monitored it could have been profitable - the problem was I'd be away from computer and when short handed good players at the higher limits would totally exploit the bots. The bots were very aggressive and did not know to stop raising when 4 to a flush was on the board and they had a set.. they'd cap all the way so for sure were losing bets, but the smaller tables where it stayed full ring more often and had a lot of fish coming in and out it would do fine.

I earned about $20K doing this over several months. I was caught by PartyPoker and all six accounts were suspended at the same time. The one with the largest balance I worked on first. The closed the account but gave me the money and did not mention the other accounts. When calling about the other accounts they asked each person what the relationship was to the other accounts. We fessed up quickly admitted to be using odds calculator software that had auto play feature that a friend had developed. We claimed ignorance by insisting we were sitting there watching the play and would overide the bots decision when the bot was too aggressive (this was true but only to small extent. I watched the tables maybe 30 minutes per day before letting them coast the rest of the time).

The other 5 accounts were all turned back on. Despite never having played together we were all banned from sitting at the same table and were told if ever using the software again our accounts would be permanent banned.

There was a legit person behind each account (neither of our names) but me and my friend managed them all.

I know things have changed a lot since then and this is more of a wide spread problem. However at the time i really thought nothing wrong at all about doing this. Back then I found nothing wrong with extreme bonus whoring using multiple accounts at both poker and sportsbooks etc. It was a different time i was younger etc.

However, Party never once mentioned confiscation of funds, even when warning if using the account software again they just said the accounts would be closed. I assume the same as the first account which was closed but the cashier and (site based) log-in still worked - just couldn't access tables.

[321]

You would have to be the worst business person in the world to settle a nuisance suit like this.

A cheater (for multi-accounting alone if not bots) can and should be thrown off the site. There isn't anything remotely improper about that. If anyone would even consider settling such a frivilous suit they would be inundated with dozens of extortion attempts a day.