Your worst Enemy
In the next chapters we will talk about “stealth”, hiding the fact that a bot plays at your account(s). For most newbies this means a sophisticated technical setup. But before we go into these technical details we should consider the real threats for your botting career.
The RoboStars Security Guard?
True, some casinos care about botters, some a bit more and some a bit less. But most casinos accept and even like botters, because they usually are good customers:
- botters provide traffic and playing opportunities for the recreational players
- they usually extract less money from the eco-system than a good winning player (these greedy evil 2+2 gangsters)
- some of the botters even bring money to the table. Consider all the stupid newbies wo buy a “winning profile” from a questionable salesman and then take it to the NL 100 tables. There have been thousands of them in the past at various botting sites and forums.
- the few long-term botters generate lots of rake for the casino, sometimes even more than their own winnings
- they are handsome and don’t cause much work for the support team: no questions and no problems (well, as long as the opponents don’t complain...)
Some casinos like botters so much that they actively seek cooperation. We know at least one small italian gambling site that got in contact with a commercial poker bot seller. The forum owner was enthusiastic — until it turned out that cashouts took at least six months — if they appeared at all. The cooperation never happened.
The Players at your Table?
Getting reported by your opponents is a serious threat. Then casinos have to react, no matter how much they like botters. Some casinos tried to reduce this risk and disabled support for tracking-software; others even invented anonymous tables to protect their fish — and to protect their botters too.
Considering these points it becomes obvious who is your worst opponent:
You!
The main threat for your botting-success is your own bot-like behaviour. In a certain botting-forum people advise to play “not more than human-like 12-16 hours a day” and newbies ask if they can play “human-like 18 hours” too. Others run multiple cashgame bots with exactly the same stats. Simply sorting your opponents by PokerTracker-stats will reveal everything. It is always the same story:
Most people fail for stupidity and greed.