[michaelwm]

Though I'm not much of a poker player myself, I am friends with many professionals who have found success both online and offline, in games from pot-limit omaha to no-limit hold-em.

Cheating in online poker has been around for many years, with varying success by online gaming companies to implement anti-cheat measures in their software. With recent developments in AI, there is renewed discussion about cheating as the best AIs have no trouble beating anything from PLO to NLHE.

It was only a matter of time before this started to spread offline, and just a few weeks ago, I heard a story from a friend of a friend who caught a player using a device similar to this during a private game he was hosting. It's only a matter of time before these sorts of devices continue to spread, and I'm not sure how the world will respond.

It would be a huge deal to cheat at events like the World Chess Tournament, but the consequences of getting caught will likely stop at complete disgrace. Cheating at events like the World Series of Poker, with tens of millions of dollars on the line, or even worse, private events with potentially billions of dollars at stake, could lead to a hell of a lot worse.

[cortesoft]

About 20 years ago (before the crackdown on online poker in the US), I had a friend who made a good living playing online poker. His cheating strategy was to use an engine to watch every single game being played on the server. Once he accumulated enough data on players, he would simply play at tables where there were really bad players. He would have insight into each players strategy, and could counter easily. He made quite a bit.

[Tenoke]

20 years ago online poker was extremely soft, and you could make a profit easily with a little bit of skill. At any rate, what you describe is usually not considered cheating - most sites (with some exceptions now, but likely none back then) explicitly allow software that tracks stats about players - by 2010 (when I was playing semi-professionally online) most regs used software like that (usually Poker Tracker or Hold'em Manager) both to make decisions in a given hand and to avoid tables with too many other regs in the first place.

[cortesoft]

It was a long time ago so my memory might be fuzzy, but I believe he played on pokerroom.com... the cheating part of it, from my memory, was that the tracking software had access to mucked hands, which normal players at the table wouldn't have access to.

[adanto6840]

For most of the sites, the software was reading the text-based "hand history" to collect data. When hands were mucked at showdown, the contents of the mucked hands generally appeared in the plain-text hand history (and most UIs provided a way to view them or to replay the hand action-by-action).

There were a couple of sites where this wasn't the case, or where the hand history wasn't provided in a simple text format (or at all) -- but generally, that's how it worked for the majority of the poker sites/clients.

The reason for being able to view mucked hands (at showdown) is because you can do the same in live games, at least that's the house rule in the vast majority of live rooms. It's almost always frowned upon, to varying degrees, to actually request to see a mucked hand - but generally IS allowed by rule (ie WSOP events explicitly allow asking to see hands mucked at showdown, though an 'anti-abuse' discretionary clause is included in that rule, too).

[john-radio]

Good reminder that any web site's policy that's enforced in the UI, but isn't enforced in its backend API, is really just a polite request.

[cortesoft]

That is interesting… I don’t play a ton of poker at casinos, but I haVe played in probably a dozen or so tournaments at Hollywood Park and a few in Vegas… I have never once seen anyone see or request to see a mucked hand, although I have seen someone get yelled at by the dealer for trying to turn over another player’s mucked hand after the showdown.

[adanto6840]

Years ago I played live games quite often (Vegas), and I do still play a few times a year (also Vegas). I've seen players make the request maybe 20 times total, and probably had the request granted ~50% of the time. When denied, it's usually because the cards were already intermingled in the muck, but on a few occasions it was due to the requestor exhibiting some level of 'menacing/antagonizing intent' to begin with.

You will definitely get yelled at if you attempt to flip someone's cards yourself, 100% of the time. At higher limits, it may get you removed from the game or worse. You can ask/request the dealer to show the mucked hand, though. I'd still suggest that you not request to do so -- it will almost assuredly piss someone (or multiple people) off. There are some rare occasions where it may be worth it and/or warranted, but they are few and far between.

Most common is when someone shows their hand to "half" the table immediately before mucking (at showdown), which often will cause the other half of the table to want to see too. Most dealers handle it well and just move on to the next hand while the players 'disseminate' the (usually useless) information.

[furyofantares]

Everyone (that talked on the forums, a minority of players) ran Poker Tracker / Hold'em Manager but even in that community I think it was considered shady to use a shared database or to undergo a large datamining operation of hands you weren't involved in.

[sgjohnson]

> most sites (with some exceptions now, but likely none back then) explicitly allow software that tracks stats about players

Only from the tables you're playing at. To my knowledge most sites won't allow you to spectate other tables for the purpose of gathering data.

[latexr]

I played casually many years ago. I remember reading about that strategy to find the fish¹ and have no doubt it was reasonably widespread, because I then opened the cash tables² and noticed that despite a number of them having vacant seats, a couple had a waitlist. Sure enough, opening the game you could see that most players were trying to take from the same person.

That lead to an interesting counter-strategy: because most players were aiming to sucker a single target they heavily avoided playing anyone else, which meant that by playing a little more aggressively one could steal³ from them as well.

Can’t say how viable that would be on the long run, as I only tried it briefly. My goal was to have fun playing and that definitely wasn’t. I stopped playing altogether shortly after.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_poker_terms#fish

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_game

³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_(poker)

[Tangurena2]

This article [0] from 1999 on Texas Hold'em shows how bad some developers have fouled up card shuffling algorithms.

> In a real deck of cards, there are 52! (approximately 2^226) possible unique shuffles. When a computer shuffles a virtual deck of cards, it selects one of these possible combinations. There are many algorithms that can be used to shuffle a deck of cards, some of which are better than others (and some of which are just plain wrong).

> The shuffling algorithm used in the ASF software always starts with an ordered deck of cards, and then generates a sequence of random numbers used to re-order the deck. Recall that in a real deck of cards, there are 52! (approximately 2^226) possible unique shuffles. Also recall that the seed for a 32-bit random number generator must be a 32-bit number, meaning that there are just over 4 billion possible seeds. Since the deck is reinitialized and the generator re-seeded before each shuffle, only 4 billion possible shuffles can result from this algorithm. Four billion possible shuffles is alarmingly less than 52!.

> The RST exploit itself requires five cards from the deck to be known. Based on the five known cards, our program searches through the few hundred thousand possible shuffles and deduces which one is a perfect match. In the case of Texas Hold'em poker, this means our program takes as input the two cards that the cheating player is dealt, plus the first three community cards that are dealt face up (the flop). These five cards are known after the first of four rounds of betting and are enough for us to determine (in real time, during play) the exact shuffle. Figure 5 shows the GUI we slapped on our exploit. The "Site Parameters" box in the upper left is used to synchronize the clocks. The "Game Parameters" box in the upper right is used to enter the five cards and initiate the search. Figure 5 is a screen shot taken after all cards have been determined by our program. We know who holds what cards, what the rest of the flop looks, and who is going to win in advance.

> Once it knows the five cards, our program generates shuffles until it discovers the shuffle that contains the five cards in the proper order. Since the Randomize() function is based on the server's system time, it is not very difficult to guess a starting seed with a reasonable degree of accuracy. (The closer you get, the fewer possible shuffles you have to look through.) Here's the kicker though; after finding a correct seed once, it is possible to synchronize our exploit program with the server to within a few seconds. This post facto synchronization allows our program to determine the seed being used by the random number generator, and to identify the shuffle being used during all future games in less than one second!

From the NY Times article [1]:

> The ASF vulnerability lies in a faulty implementation of what is known as a pseudo-random number generator to produce a shuffled deck of cards before each round of play. The order of each shuffled deck is completely determined by one number, known as the seed. In this case, the program chose a seed based on the time, measured in milliseconds since midnight. By synchronizing their program with the system clock on the server generating the seed, Mr. McGraw and his associates were able to narrow the number of possible decks to about 200,000. Then, given the cards dealt and the community cards in the center, they could quickly compute which deck was being used.

Your friend's strategy of only playing poor players is a lot safer than breaking the casino's wallet. I'm reminded of the scene in the movie Casino [2] where casino staff drag the cheaters into the basement and threaten to cut off their hands with a power saw.

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20060205100630/http://www.develo...

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/13/business/compressed-data-...

[2] - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/

[icelancer]

Oh yeah. Mike Postle was 100% cheating and getting fed moves from a confederate. But even if he wasn't, this type of setup with communication could simply maximize imperfect information, run it through a "solver" (which is what poker players call their game engines), and return the best plays.

More on the Mike Postle thing in this twoplustwo thread, or of course, Google:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/mike...

[caminante]

What a coincidence!

I stumbled onto and down the Mike Postle rabbit-hole. [0] It's astonishing that he was blatantly able to peek at his phone, period, and he never got caught!

My favorite is the hand where they're playing PLO (with 4 pre-flop cards) and the game overlay is still NLH (2 pre-flop cards). Postle freaks out trying to re-scan the RFID of his pre-flop cards. The behavior makes no sense unless...Postle knew (via his phone) that the game mode was wrong, and he couldn't see his opponents' hands.

I'm assuming you have, but if you haven't breezed through Doug's channel, it's fascinating and really approachable. If I were playing online poker, I'd be paranoid that someone is using live assist.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA

[Theodores]

In my circle of friends I have one or two that will take the option to cheat, to this day. This was fine during school days, but, as an adult, I question the behaviour.

This is at cards (Bridge) and Scrabble with some quick hands of normal card games if there is a break or insufficient time for a 'Bridge Rubber'.

My counter strategy is to win fairly and squarely. My cheating friends are obligated to spend a lot of effort planning the cheat and not getting caught. After the sleight of hand they also need to monitor the table to make sure nobody has noticed. They also need to be watching for others cheating.

With Scrabble in particular, total focus on the task in hand is, for me, a much better strategy. The dopamine hit is being able to lay down all the letters, calmly and without commotion, to get maximum points, doing it again on the next round from a fresh rack of letters. This can be done with an 'open' game, where opportunities are given to competitors instead of made a priority to deny. Done well, this feels like you have just put together e=mc2 each play.

Because of gambling mentality, the stakes get higher and higher. I am not in it for the money and feel troubled by taking what was other people's money from the table, more so if they cheat because I feel sorry for them. If it is a legitimate game then the stakes are representative of the situation, the prize can be fairly claimed.

Of consequence is reputation. If you cheat and lose then that is going to be remembered by your peers for decades. However, if you play a monster game where people you have not played before start out with the assumption that they are just going to be battered, then that reputation is short lived. Which is good because people will still play you, even the cheats.

[gverrilla]

Cheaters ruin games, it's never "fine", but sociopathic behavior.

[bravura]

How did your friend catch the cheater at their private game?

[illwrks]

"I'm not sure how the world will respond."

Naked poker/chess etc...

[blackboxlogic]

Don't forget the full body x-ray before each match.

[kfrzcode]

Which AI has beat humans at poker? I'm curious as I just heard a guest on Lex Fridman's podcast say differently... I'm not up to speed with that realm

[Cthulhu_]

IIRC if you take out the human element of poker (bluffing), it becomes a statistics / numbers game - at least, I see 'win chance' numbers on the off occasion I see poker on TV. Knowing your chances and being able to guess at other players' gives you an advantage.

[hahajk]

But you don't need a computer for that... knowing the odds for a hand is a pretty basic skill. And on the other hand if you did place bets based on your hand odds you'd be leaking a lot of information to your opponent.

[rieTohgh6]

Not really related to AI but it gives quite an advantage if you can connect multiple "players" to same table. It is not worth to do it without some kind of automation and service providers try to prevent it from happening.

[__s]

Pluribus

[kfrzcode]

Fascinating.

> In AI, two-player zero-sum games (such as heads-up hold'em) are usually won by approximating a Nash equilibrium strategy; however, this approach does not work for games with three or more players. Pluribus instead uses an approach which lacks strong theoretical guarantees, but nevertheless appears to work well empirically at defeating human players. Across the competitions, Pluribus won an average of over 30 milli big blinds per game. Pluribus' self-learned play style eschews "limping" (calling the big blind), and engages in "donk betting" (ending a round with a call and starting the next round by betting) more often than human experts do.

[eganist]

I wonder if fraud laws anywhere are written in a way where cheating in tournaments with prize pools can catch charges that are already on the books.

[Cthulhu_]

Yeah I'm fairly sure there's security checks at these tournaments and the environment gets tightly controlled; I wouldn't be surprised if they go as far as have everyone and everything that goes into the playing room go through a full-body X-ray.

[pedrosorio]

> private events with potentially billions of dollars at stake

What are these? Elon Musk - Jeff Bezos head to head?

[sgjohnson]

No, those are the make believe games that Dan Bilzerian loves to boast about.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

There are certainly games with $10m+ on the table in total. I’m sure there have been 9 figure pots, if not 10, but not every single hand.

[sgjohnson]

I highly doubt that there have been 9 figure pots.