Poker is my favorite pastime and I write about the Internet for a living, yet I have never played so much as a single hand online (at least not for money).
The reasons are many - three kids and a mortgage primary among them - but The New York Times yesterday hit upon another that will do if those should ever prove inadequate: Bots.
Bots are infesting online poker sites, and, while the sites insist they can control these software pests, you can consider me a full-fledged skeptic. From that Times story:
"The large majority of bots are very bad," said Darse Billings, a consultant to PokerStars and Full Tilt and the former chief of data analytics at Full Tilt. "More than 90 percent are losing money."
If that was supposed to offer poker players comfort, it had exactly the opposite effect on me. You mean if I find a game with a bot there's a 10 percent chance that sack of software will laugh in the face of my ill-timed check raise? No, thanks.
And it's not the prospect of today's bots that has me most concerned ... or should have the online poker industry most concerned.
They'll get better, no?
So, too, will the countermeasures, of course, but am I willing to wager on which side will win that arms race?
Not right now I'm not.
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