Re: [ba-poker] Botsxyxy

[Andy Latto <andy.latto(deleted the rest)>]

   On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Andy Latto wrote:

   >
   >
   >
   > > From: Andrew Prock
   > > Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 9:33 PM
   > > Subject: Re: [ba-poker] Bots
   > >
   > >
   > > On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Uncle Roger wrote:
   >
   > > > Is it only a matter of time before online play is ruined by bots?
   > >
   > > Assuming the bots are good players, this is equivalent to asking:
   > >
   > > Is it only a matter of time before online play is ruined by
   > > good players?
   >
   > I think it's a little different. If someone asks the question
   >
   > "Joe's poker play is improving; when he gets good, will that ruin
   >    poker?"
   >
   > I'd think this was a silly question; there will be plenty of tables
   > that Joe is not playing at, and Joe will have no effect on these tables.
   >
   > But if someone adds
   >
   > "Joe is able to play 24 hours a day, and has sufficient powers of
   > concentration to play at 1000 tables at once without effect on the
   > quality of his play",

   Well, we certainly aren't in that situation.

I'm confused; I think we're in exactly that situation.

That is, I think that anyone with the skills to write a winning bot
also has the skill to write code that will run 1000 incarnations
of that bot, all of which play 24 hours a day.

   I'll agree that the world ins't white if you agree the world isn't
   black.

If the statement in the above paragraph is "claiming the world is black",
then I disagree. 

Note that I haven't made any specific predictions about *how*
bots might or might not affect online poker. I'm just saying
that there's much more possibility of a single bot affecting
the character of games than a single human player, because
the bot can be cloned.

   There's certainly an ecological balance here.  Sharks don't
   exist without fish, and when there are lots of fish, the sharks
   thrive.

Pursuing the ecological analogy a bit more, if a beneficial mutation
in sharks occurs, the ecology will change slowly, over many shark
generations, as mutant sharks are selected and become a larger
percentage of the shark population. This is what happens when, for
example, a new poker book with useful new information gets published.
But when a beneficial mutation in bacteria occurs, the ecology changes
very quickly, because bacterial generations are so short that it
doesn't take long at all before the entire population consists of
mutant bacteria. Poker programs are more like bacteria than like
sharks, because one good mutant bot can turn into 10,000 good mutant
bots overnight.  So the ecology can change suddenly and
radically. That's all I'm saying.


                                        Andy