MSNBC has an interesting article on software programs designed to play poker online for money. Supposedly, the major online casinos are all working to block the software programs, or bots, from playing. I think this might just be marketing-speak on the part of the casinos, because why would they care who’s playing their games? According to the article:
Gautam Rao, the professional player, also expressed doubts about the poker sites’ professed zero tolerance of bots, though for a different reason. He said site operators make for bad cops when it comes to policing bots since they still collect the house “rake” – the percentage taken from each pot – whether the player is human or software.
So while the online casinos don’t really care about the bots, because they make money whoever’s playing, they do care that real, live, humans are afraid of playing so they’re forced make a big deal out of blocking or banning the poker bots.
Edward Felten, though, sees a way for an entrepreneur to jump into the fray and carve out a nitch:
But there is another strategy. An online casino could encourage bots, and even set up bots-only games. The game would then become not a human vs. human card game but a human vs. human battle between bot designers for geekly mastery. I’ll bet there are plenty of programmers out there who would like to give it a try.
Joe on March 18th, 2008 at 9:11 pm