The Anarchist\’s Pokerbook

James in Dallas sends along a link to some talk going on among not-so-pokery programmer types about how to build a poker bot. (I sent a reply to the Craigslist ad — using a different email address even — but for some reason those poker-bot hawkers haven\’t yet replied.)

Anyhow, the code monkeys have been chirping about details for nearly two years, and now, perhaps like scientists working on the Manhattan Project, some are showing their work:

Poker bots, underground online poker boiler rooms, and collusion are a reality. That doesn\’t mean online poker\’s not worth playing, just that it pays to be educated about what\’s possible. Furthermore, there should be public discussion regarding what to do about it because one thing\’s certain: computers and programming languages aren\’t exactly going to be getting less powerful. The rise of the poker bots is a virtual certainty. I\’d like to see the major online poker venues open up their famously vague \”bot detection\” and \”anti-collusion\” strategies to public scrutiny, as cryptography and security providers learned to do years ago. The best security algorithms and techniques all have the weight of public review behind them and I don\’t see how online poker\’s any different.