Topic: Analyzing other players in poker games (Read 287 times)

Currently bots are what are considered to put this whole poker thing wrong, because of course a bot calculates every move, every play and everything that can be done, however I am one of those who think it is not worth it, if poker is going to be played it is because it is going to show who is who and that's it, that is why when poker tournaments are held it is necessary that the software has the necessary security to detect those cheaters, because it is not worth competing like that, sometimes face-to-face poker is more efficient if you want to study the gestures of the players, but through the digital way it is difficult to determine.

I was actually thinking about EU:s privacy laws, and i would have to check ToS:es from casinos / poker sites, because i think that players might already consent for giving up that information when registering. I could be wrong about that though. If not, consumer protection would definitely explain why these kind of services wouldn't be sold publicly. But i am certain that they already exits in some level.

And in many sites games are open for public to watch. I didn't even think about private rooms.

Even though some gambling games requires this but I think Poker is a bit different and requires more than them. I think having a background in psychology education is an advantage here but even if we don't have it and if we will just play a lot of Poker and do some personality scanning, it is like we will have the equivalent background of it and maybe we can as well apply it on other things, preferably when looking for a job.

That's cool if we can play for the same opponent for days but I think it can mostly happen locally and online games will always faced us random opponents from time to time. You think it's advantageous but your opponents can also think of the same thing. Oh well, that can still give us an intense fight. So no matter what the outcome is, what important is we have a good time.

Those players must be noobs but for sure some of them can adopt later on if not most because they will also realized on why they keep on losing. Even though Poker is like this (a highly skill-based game) I still believe that it is like any other games which also needs some luck sometimes. It must be when both players are well-skilled but I think other scenarios can be in play too such as if there are accidents that happen in the game, there is a problem with the player, the environment, etc...

If the casino is a reputable one, I believe, you won't worry so much about the provable fairness of the game. Because they won't put their image on the line if they are not playing or exercising provable fairness at all times. Because if they are not indeed practicing this fairness, at some point, a player will discover this and it can ruin their business at a snap.


This is the good thing about poker. Even AI would have hard time analyzing the players. But for offline, sure, they have reputation known to others. But the actual game won't give you away how they strategize in front of the table. They are high-level professional poker players for so many reasons. And surely, they already have their techniques and not everyone can uncover those techniques. Else, they will be busted easily on their games.

If these data are publicly available I don't think there would be problems of that kind. I thought you were suggesting something more like accessing huge amounts of data of private rooms, but if you can do it with data shared by players with knowledge of the facts, then I don't think anyone can stop you by simply alleging data protection.

About pseudonymity you asked, data protection applies (at least in Europe) to all data except the fully anonymous. But not to data of any kind that are public if you use them "domestically". The service providers you mentioned, on the other hand, should be more careful IMO.
 

You cannot get to the highest leagues of poker without analyzing your opponents - it comes with the territory. You are not playing against the house in this game, but the house is definitely taking it's cut via the rake - so you need to be outpacing that. You can get pretty far by just running the simple math of odds behind each hand you get, but that will only get so far. People will be reading you and bluffing you like crazy, eventually you will go broke unless you learn how to read your opponents and be willing to risk it when you think they are lying. Most poker rooms will not allow automated bots or any software outside of the information that they already provide, or maybe a little bit extra like your long term hand analysis which can tell your weaknesses.

Let me give a new input, you can analyze the others yet if you have a huge amount of bad luck you will not do anything nor you will go further, in many casinos and not in only one the third party providers of Poker absolutely suck and the reason is simple, how can you lose in consecutive ways when you have a pair of Aces and you go all in. I understand that you can lose once or a couple of times when you go all in with 2 aces but losing in a consecutive way simply doesn't make sense, are we sure that the auditor of the software that the casino uses is a good one, how do we know the auditor has not been paid and the casino to do a lot of deep shit regarding everything in there, I have started to not trust some casinos in this matter. We need to have a provably fair mechanism that can prove us just that, how fair a casino is and in every game, including third party poker or slot providers.

I guess we have different definitions for immorality as what i am suggesting isn't a silver bullet of any kind, but just a data, like memory pad inside a complicated excel.

And few things here: I don't see this as personal or hidden data, it's same data that players can already observe publicly in these tables, just by playing. Players themselves know that people can see the history of played hands in the table.

There are literal note taking possibilities inside the games already, and those are provided by the game host. So is writing as much as notes as possible an illegal registry, when it's about pseudonymous players? Or will it becomes an illegal registry? With how much data exactly?

I have never tried or encountered such situations. Also, I don't like playing poker because it seems to sharpen my mind, because I have a cousin who is a poker player, and he competes here with us nationwide, and there is even a chance that he also competes in other countries because he has a manager.

But the one online doesn't fight; instead, it's always more physical, so I have no idea about what the OP says about bot methods. Although AI is to be used, in this era it seems
that it is not impossible.

Is noone reading replies? There is already software available that tells you all of this stuff. It's just a matter of does the poker site you want to play on allow the HUD to be used or not. It doesn't guarantee you win, but it does give you stats on past actions which allows you to make a more informed decision.

It's possible to create a bot that mimics a player based on the input data we given but it's too much data we need to get better results and these are just possible outcomes based on given data and it could change if the real person decides at the moment because bot decide the moves based on past actions while a human decide based on the current situation. And that's too much extent for someone to analyse how a player handles their bet and if they are our opponents you obviously will have limited input data about their moves that makes it highly inaccurate.

Leaving aside whether it could be considered cheating or not (although, let me note that I consider highly immoral what you're proposing here), for a behavioural analysis like that you would have to process a series of personal data that are protected by the laws of many countries.

Perhaps an online casino could add a clause to their T&Cs that would cover that processing, but in your case, do you imagine yourself asking for consent to the rest of the players to profile them and analyse their behaviour legally? You might think about doing it in secret, but then the problem would not be whether it is cheating or not, but the fact that you would be carrying out illegal personal data processing to, maybe, scam your opponents.

I don't think this is cheating in traditional sense. It's just complex way of taking notes, and to find patterns in behavior. It's power of psychology enhanced with computing power. Some people can always break their patterns to threw opponents off. That's what they are dong now.

Using computer program in real life events, it's not allowed to use any help, but in online games, one can assume that someone is using every edge they can, as no one could prove that you wouldn't.

Using help with chess for example would be considered as cheating, because there's no room for randomness or luck. So computer programs would make all the difference in most cases. In fact they are pretty much strip searching for the big games. Poker games have way more luck involved, so "cheating" might just give an edge, it doesn't determine who would win.

You're a decade too late and there is not always the need for an AI or anything spectacular to do this job, it's just data and statistics, poker tracker has been doing his for 10 years.


And what aid does it provide to you other than stuff you could have researched yourself?
This information would actually level the playfield as one player could have the resources to track the data of his opponent by the moment he finds out who plays in the tournament while others do not, so with a simple bot like one of the market right now for a membership fees avey player would have access to the same data, perfectly legal and the reason why such tools are not banned.

It could have been existing before, as casinos might have that database already of players that usually sit on poker games. And so they have the advantage already and if let's say they let their bot on the same game and then have that database to go around. So that will be their advantage. But with the advent of AI, odds could have increased in favor of the house if they have inbuilt database + AI. Who we might not think in the beginning is a bot but then colluding later with other bots so they are definitely hard to beat unless that poker player realized what is happening around or be lucky to have successful wins against the house. So it's possible already that AI might have been used my many online casinos now but I doubt that they are going to admit it.

No matter how small the use of bots in gambling, whether they play automatically or just give advice, of course it is a fraud, I think with the use of bots that are based on calculating data, steps or potential winnings and bots that play in gambling will only damage the integrity of that the game later, So far we know that poker is not only limited to winning but sometimes Poker becomes an event where skills,  Strategy, and player decisions are the determining factors for winning, so it is very important for anyone to maintain fairness in the game to ensure that every player has an equal chance to win based on their own abilities, and not instead use bot that ultimately keep us away from the fun that exists from the gambling.

You don't have to build or buy a bot just buy a HUD. Pokertracker4 is less than $100 and tracks a shitload of info for you. Some of the things I know for sure it tracks are Vpip( how often a player puts chips in a pot), how often a player raises, how often they fold to a raise, how often they 3 bet, how often they do a continuation bet if they raise preflop, and many other stats. I believe they track cash and tourney play, but don't quote me on that. You may have to buy an upgrade for cash. If you do decide to purchase, make sure the pokerroom you play on is supported.

888Poker. 888Poker.COM, .ES, WSOP.co.uk & others.
Full Tilt.
GTECH G2 Network. PokerHeaven, VirginPoker & others.
iPoker Network. Titan Poker, Bet365, Everest & others.
Merge Network. Carbon, RPM, Hero & others.
MPN (MicroGaming) 24hPoker, Ladbrokes, NordicBet & others.
People's Poker Network.
PokerStars.

The bolded networks are what a google search shows for supported networks. Good luck.

https://www.pokertracker.com/products/PT4/supported.php link

I will tell you that is extremely difficult to analyze or even when you do a lot of analyses you still can lose as you think only one combination of cards of the opponents can make you lose and you think he has not those cards and go all in only to see that the opponent has those cards and lose.

A good example from which I have lost is always like this, in the cards shown are 789 and I have 56 so I go all in thinking it is almost impossible for opponent to have 10 and Jack and when I go all in I see opponent having 10 and Jack card making me lose. So from this example I conclude that analyze as much as you want you can still lose.

The game should be fair, I honestly don't understand how someone can use a bot in an online game, will it count cards? I'm not sure that it's possible, but I admit that I don't understand a lot about it, and of course I wouldn't want to play against an opponent who uses aids, it would be an unequal game. And I think it's possible to distinguish a bot from a human, the difference will be noticeable, there will be different delay times between moves and different reactions to my actions, so I think it's possible to distinguish.

My understanding is that poker is as much about reading your opponents
as it is about reading the cards and this is most achieved when playing
face to face tournaments. And on your side its as much about your discipline
and mental ability as it is about how you play your cards in a particular situation.

You are looking for "tells" from your opponents, the might move a certain way,
smile, do something with their hands etc. after receiving cards or when
river or flop are played, is a bot going to register all that?

Automatically? I'm not an expert as to the limits and maximum reach of AI right now, but it seems difficult. After all, as you've indicated, the chance of meeting same players is rather low. So, is there a way for AI to provide you the profiles, tendencies, strategies, play patterns, and so on of your opponents right away? I'm afraid it's not that instant.

If you're playing tournaments offline though, I'm sure some players have created certain reputations within the community-- some kind of aggressive, some prefer playing safe, and so on. There must have been patterns developed in their way of playing, although I don't think high-level poker players are that predictable.

It's a perfectly workable good idea. Even more than that, it is possible that such an AI is already being used by someone. Although from a legal point of view, I doubt that it is legal. Is it allowed to use auxiliary technical means and software for the game? In my opinion, this is not allowed. Although, such data collection and subsequent training and use of the AI model will be almost impossible to prove. (After all, we are talking about online poker, as I understand it).

If automated bots are scrapped due to being clunky I don't think a bot on the command to analyze oppositions/other players handed cards would uniquely perform one of the efficient results.

If ideologically we think the casinos are cracking down  the auto bots due to its nature of cheating, using other mechanical systems as thought can not be spare to exist in any of the proactive (no cheating) updated casinos.

Cheating is cheating either porker or whatever casino games is required to be played single handedly by human performance and not AI but if that seems to be workable and acceptable, of course it would be a great one for the users while other players suffers it and for this thought I don't see this technology feasible.

I believe that even in this case, bots remain cheating aids, the use of which is not allowed both in poker in particular and in gambling in general. Any aids that disrupt the game balance between gamblers provide advantages that have no place in gambling such as gambler vs. gambler. The confrontation in poker should be between the personal qualities of gamblers, and not in who has more advanced (technically better) aids or the ability to use them. I am for "pure" gambling.

You look at their general personality according to how deep do they bluff, at what cards they go all in and how much risk they are willing to take.
We can get the basic outlook within a few hands and when you play them for days, you get the knowledge of their playing style so you could devise your playing style accordingly. As an example, there are people who bluff a lot even with high hands, you can easily milk money out of them when you have a better card. While some people go hard only when they have a triple or flush, if you think you can't have better hand, you could just fold saving yourself.
Poker indeed is a game of reading each other and planning accordingly. Only luck won't take you far unless you read other players.

Not that it's possible, it's been possible for a long time, since before there were AIs, that there are statistics programmes that, based on the player's history, tell you if he is more aggressive (and therefore tends to bluff more) and less aggressive (and then raises only when he has a very good hand), things like that. These are commonly used, because they are legal, the only thing is that the statistics are collected by the program every time you play. However, there are also those who sell statistics, data already collected so that if you start in a room you can know how your opponents play without having to wait to collect the statistics yourself. This is forbidden but there is a black market.
And nowadays with AI I wouldn't be surprised if software has been developed to save you from having to think, to tell you which is the most optimal move.
But all these programs can only be used in fiat rooms, I don't think you can use any of them in a cryptocurrency room.

As ridiculous as it sounds, technically speaking isn't that already the bot playing and it's just using you as a medium instead?

I 100% agree it's plausible, it's just a bit of live web scraping towards the games of each player to find out what decision they'd take in the most likely case, kind of like breaking it down to multiple choice questions, but I reckon wouldn't general data be more than enough? Like I reckon if you gather said data, a LOT of those data would pretty much tally towards doing the same thing during say, the river when they have a pair, or a high card. Naturally having more specific information is much more advantageous but I reckon that'd just overkill for the most part?

I believe this will be available in no time or maybe does exist already but we just havent known. With the help of AI the idea you mentioned isnt impossible, but there will be questions to its accuracy of course.

Wondering if anyone had some encountered with this kind or at least knew of.

It would basically the same that bots which play for you, the only difference it would be your interference on whether to pay attention to the profile being drawn for you by the bot or trust your gut on what it is the best approach for each situation.
See... people do not invest their time and money to create a frictional poker bot only to end up ignoring it's recommendations, so if you had access to such a tool you would end up abusing it's power to increase your profit or chances of profit as much as possible, anyone would do the same.
That is why I prefer to play face-to-face poker nowadays and I train playing with actual people instead of going on the internet and waste my time with bots who try to get as much advantage off my as possible, and think faster than I do. At least, face-to-face poker offers other mechanisms and ways to get your objective, it offers chances to deceive other players and read their corporal cues while you build your own strategy up. That is the kind of poker I love.

It's great that you came up with the idea of ​​using a bot to profile players and calculate best practices in real time in poker, especially in tournaments. Gathering information about your opponent is very important. But as you said It's hard to use that information if you don't meet the same players infrequently. Savings are best done in cash games where you are often facing familiar opponents but even then you will need to be more focused and attentive to details.

It involves using AI or bots to calculate the best moves based on player behavior. I think it is important to acknowledge the ethical and legal implications, even though AI is certainly advanced and capable of deeper analysis. But usage during live games Even if it's just collecting information and not actively playing. But it is considered an unfair advantage. Most poker platforms prohibit the use of any support that may strictly affect the game. and gives one player an advantage over the others. However, there are some legal tools and data that provide insights based on player profile data (e.g. trends, ratings) and can help you improve your own game. If you point out how others play their hands The key is to use them ethically as a learning tool behind the game rather than something that influences your decisions in real time. In the end Poker is all about skill and adapting to table changes. which is part of the fun

I am interested if people are doing this and how they do it. Do you take notes and what kind of information do you use?

I have sometimes just watched a hands trough to end knowing that i'll lose, just to know how others play their cards that seemingly don't make sense, and i have seen them just just waiting for the river to save them etc. But analyzing others only works in cash table games where there are certain amount of people, and i am mostly playing huge tournaments these days, and changes to meet same players is rather low, as so are cases where i could even use my notes against them.

This made me think if there are bot services that i could use for creating player profiles automatically. You know, bots that would include action history and deduct best action for each player, in every possible combination. Combining info on how they have played each hand, combined with which community cards and in which stages (pre-flop, flop, turn, or river). And obviously using data like chip count, bet, and if they have BB at the time, and stuff like that.

I am certain that something like this could be build, but parsing that data into useful information requires lots of work. But i am assuming there must has already to be AI that is using massive behavioral profile databases to beat those players.

So, as automated bots are probably frowned on, how about bots that don't play, but just calculate best actions for current situation against the players in real time?